Fall to Pieces
by lostone22
Summary: Ever since she can remember, sixteenyearold Hermione has been plagued by the same terrifying dream and an overwhelming fear of water... What does Draco have to do with all of this?Pleas Review!
1. Lost

A/N: hey there I'm starting a new story…

Summary: Ever since she can remmber, sixteen-year-old Hermione has been plagued by the same terrifying nightmare and an overwhelming fear of water. After almosting drowing at a pool party she flees to the safety of her father house for the summer. But Hermione's problems only intensify as she stumbles into a series of strange connections linking herself to a girl who lived in that cliffside house nearly a century before. Then the eerie coincidences start to form a dangerous pattern, and Hermione finds herself haunted by visions that feel more like memoriesmemories of a time before she was even born!

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or the characters, if you ever read dreadful sorry I'm going to combine the two so I don't own the plot either…

Fall to Pieces

Chapter one

_.:Lost:._

_I know its impossible, but I'm floating down the hall. The emptiness echoes, the walls press close. I'm drifting along like a ghost in the dark, past closed doors on both sides. My feet skim the floor. I know I am heading for the room at the end of the hall, but why? I know someone waiting. but who?_

_All around the hall there's a hum. A buzz like the menace of thousand of bees. _

_And out of the hum comes a man's deep rumble, right through the door at the end of the hall. I'll just stretch out my hand-reach for the knob-but wait, what's that?_

_A high, keening cry. And a trickle of red seeps under the door._

_Then a wind rushes out, and I'm cold. I must get away, but the walls press close and my legs pump air and the buzzing is a cacophony…_

_Somehow I find a staircase. I use to banister to pull my weightless self down. At the bottom of the stairs a mirror shimmers in the moonlight. And there's my face in the mirror, but no not exactly mine. It is someone else, and she is smiling. There is no escape now. After all._

"Hermione, wake up." At the sound of her friend Ginny voice, Hermione eyes flew open. She lay sideways in bed, sheets and pillows all askew. Her muscles were tense from trying to fight her way out of the dream.

"Look dawdling in bed isn't going to help." Ginny said impatiently. "You got to pull yourself together." Her frown changed to a look of concern as she saw Hermione's face. "Are you sick? What is it?"

Hermione unclenched her fists in the sheets and struggled to sit up. "Nightmare city."

"Another bad dream" her friends frown was back.

"Same old, same old." But hadn't something been different this time? Hermione pushed her curly brown hair off of her face and glanced at the clock. "Oh, no." She dragged herself out of the bed and headed for the bathroom. "I'll be down in a sec."

She turned the cold tap on and bent over the sink. Grabbing a washcloth, she scrubbed her face hard. As usual after the dream, she felt queasy and guilty and soiled.

Then she brushed her hair, peering into the mirror. How was she supposed to go class looking like such a wreck? She was horrible pale. Maybe some blush?

Then it happened. For just a second, the silvery glass seemed fluid, changed, shimmering as it did in the dream. Hermione shook her head groggily.

She opened the small tube of red gel, pressed a dab onto her cheekbones, the mirror shimmered-glimmered- again, and the girl looking back was not Hermione but someone quite other.

Hermione froze, fingertip poised at her cheek. _This can't be happening._

The face in the mirror gazed back with dark eyes. The hair, was much lighter then Hermione's. The cheeks redder.

_It must be a trick of light._

Hermione squeezed her eyes shut and slapped both hands against the mirror. _Wake up, idiot!_ She felt cold all over, just as she had in the dream, and it was a full minute before she dared look in the mirror again.

What she saw, of course , was her own pale face, and a thin smear of read across the silvered surface of the glass.

"Hey, your going to be late if you don't hurry up. " Ginny called. "Are you dressed yet?"

"Almost," Hermione called back. She shook her head ruefully at her reflection, reached for her washcloth and wiped off the gel.

Hermione hurried back to her bedroom and pulled on her school uniform. She twisted her long hair automatically into a single braid. She left the bed unmade.

Hermione swung the backpack into her shoulder and moved reluctantly down the stairs.

A/N: that's it for now please review !


	2. Swimming lessons

A/N: I hope you like the first chapter :) This story is mainly about Hermione and Amanda's cousin which i havent decided who that should be yet..

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or the characters, if you ever read dreadful sorry I'm going to combine the two so I don't own the plot either…

Fall to Pieces

Chapter 2

A week had passed and she went home for the summer. Her mom had made her take summer school at West River Academy.

"Pinch me so I'll wake up," moaned Hermione as she twirled her combination lock and open the metal door. "This whole week has been a nightmare." She stripped off the schools uniform and pulled on the hateful West River Academy regulation swimsuit.

Amanda nodded in sympathy. "It's too bad your mom found out. But, you know, I wish you'd told me you hadn't taken the test. I'd have helped you." She grinned. "I do happen to know a little bit about swimming, you know!"

"That's just it. You're such a star, I couldn't tell you." Hermione bumdled her clothes into the locker and slammed the door. "And now I'm stuck with Coach Hawthorne. Listen, can you come in with me? That way, if i start to drown, you'll be on hand to fish me out." She laughed unconvincingly. Amanda didn't know she wasn't joking.

But Amanda shook her head. "Sorry. Don't you Remember my cousin is coming today? His school is already out for the summer. Mom's picking him up at the bus station and then coming to get me. They should be here any second."

"Oh, right." With the blow-up with her mother, all the fuss about swim lessons, and the nights broken by the dream, Hermione had forgotten. And yet Amanda had been excited for weeks that her cousin was coming to town for the summer. "Maybe I can meet him this weekend." Hermione told her. "If my mother lets me out of the house."

"She's pissed, huh?" Amanda light blue eyes were sympathetic. She picked up Hermione's blue towel from the bench and handed it to her. "Listen, I've got to go now. I'll call you later."

Hermione hesitated at the door to the pool. "Wish me luck." As Amanda turned away, Hermione hugged her blue canvas backback against her chest. Inexplicably, the long hallway from the dream flickered in her mind._I wish this were a dream, too! _The lump of dread in her stomact was as hard as the cement bottom of the pool. Maybe she was coming down with stomach cancer.

Now that would make a fine medical excuse.

"Come on, don't be afraid, just take a big breath and jump in! If you don't just do it, you'll never pass!"

Coach Hawthrone's voice rang in Hermione's ears, but Hermione just stood there staring down at the blue water. Finally she scrunched her eyes shut and edged a cautious foot over the side of the pool. The water, cold and infinitely dangerous, closed over her big toe.

"That isn't good enough, Hermione! Jump in! Get a move on!" Coach Hawthrone's voice grew sharp. They had been standing around like this for twenty minutes already.

Hermione opened her eyes and stepped quickly away from the edge of the pool, the lump of panic heavy in her stomach. "I've told you - I can't" The fear made her voice sullen.

Hermione glanced at the water and saw her pale face reflected in the blue surface. She edged toward the locker room. "I told you," she murmured. "I just can't"

"you mean you wont, Hermione. That's quite different."

But Hermione slipped through the swinning door and walked through the locker room. She dressed quickly and slung her backpack over her shoulder. Expecting Coach Hawthrone to appear any second to haul her back to the pool. She couldn't believe she just walked away from a teacher.

Hurrying now, Hermione bypassed the regular pool and exit and slipped out the door that lead into the back hallway to the gym. The corridors of West River Acdemy were empty, and Hermione footsteps echoed as she ran, her sandals slapping the polished wood. She kept glancing back over her shoulder to make sure Coach Hawthrone was not in hot pursuit. It would just be her luck, the way things were going, to get suspended for running away.

_.:Flash back:._

_Jenny, Hermione's mother had came to school happy and proud at all the prise about Hermione's academic performance._

_She was perplexed, through, when Mrs. Higley said that Hermione would be graduating with honors next summer- right up at the vry top of her class-provied that she fulfilled the swim requirement. Jenny pointed out that Hermione had passed the test a year ago._

_Hermione had brought home a note from the headmistress herself attesting to the fact. Then it was Mrs. Higley's trun to look puzzled, and she sent to school secretary to bring Hermione to the office for a little chat. The whole chemistry class was buzzing at her summons to the headmistress. Hermione Granger in trouble? It boggled their minds._

_The headmistress frowned at Hermione and opened the filer folder of her recored at West River Academy." I never wrote your mother a note saying you had passed your swim requirement," she said." Becasue, as you well know, you have refused to take the test each summer."_

_.:End Flashback:._

Hermione hurried down the long corridor of the recreation wing and turned into the lobby. She heard footstpes tapping down the corridor to her right and pushed wildly through the heavy front doors. Coach Hawthrone must not catch her!

She flew out into the wide tone steps and crashed headlong into a man standing there. She reeled backward. Strong hands grabbed her shoulders and streadied her. Her canvas backpack thudded down the steps.

"Whoa!" He said. "That was close."

Flustered, Hermione stared for a second at the blur of his blue shirt, then smiled apologetically up at him. With surpise, she saw Amanda standing on the steps next to him.

A/N: Please Review and tell me who Amanda's cousin should be

Ron?

Draco?

Harry?

Blaise?

Heres a sence from the next chapter...althrough it might change if you chose a different character.

There was a sudden rush of wind and, oddly, a smell of salt, as if an ocean breeze had somehow traveled far inland, wafting across the Ohio vally. "Hob..." She breathed the name softly, holding out her hand to him.

Amanda snorted. "Not Bob! I told you, its..."


	3. Hob and meting Amanda's cousin

A/N: okay here's chapter 3 and I've decided to put Draco as Amanda's cousin.

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or the characters, if you ever read dreadful sorry I'm going to combine the two so I don't own the plot either…

Fall to Pieces

Chapter 3

"I came back to wait for your lesson to end so you and Hob could meet. I thought you would like Hob, but I didn't expect you'd totally fall for him like this!" Amanda said with a big smile on her face.

Hermione laughed it off. "Head over heels, but you know what a klutz I am.". She glanced up at the boy…not a man as she had first thought. His sheer bulk had misled her, but she saw now he was probably her own age. He was built like a quidditch player, tall, stocky, and solid. His hair was brown and curly, His face seemed for a moment just as familiar. _Where have I seen before?_

There was a sudden rush of wind and, oddly, a smell of salt as if an ocean breeze had somehow traveled far inland, wafting across the Ohio valley. "Hob…" She breathed the name softly, holding out her hand to him.

Amanda snorted. "Not Bob! I told you, it's Draco." Hermione looked at Amanda with a confused look. Amanda laughed. "You need formal introductions or something? Okay. Hermione this is my cousin Draco Malfoy. Draco, this vision of grace is the best friend I was telling you about, Hermione Granger."

Hermione pulled her hand back and glared at Draco. However, when she first saw him, he looked different but now that she is looking at him, he was the same pureblood slytherin that she knew from Hogwarts

_What's wrong with me?_

His gray eyes met her brown ones, and her stomach felt hollow. "I'm so sorry." She whispered. She couldn't believe she just said that. Why was she sorry?

The salt wind receded. Amanda stared at her, incredulous. There was an uncomfortable silence. Then Draco reached down and picked up Hermione backpack. "Here you go."

She glared at him slung the pack over her shoulder. "Thanks." Hermione stood there awkwardly. "Sorry…I mean, I was just in a hurry." The inexplicable guilty, hollow shame…the same feeling in the pit of her stomach that she'd felt in the headmistress's office…was gone, and now she felt like a complete idiot. _I could die! wasn't plowing into him bad enough? Do I have to sound like an idiot, too?_

Amanda began chattering about her weekend plans. "I want Draco to meet everybody." she said, "but he have to wait till later because our whole family's going to Lake Pymatuning for the weekend. But when we get back, I'm going to have a party. Draco's probably going to be here the whole summer, isn't that great?"

Hermione couldn't help to think 'Greaaaaaat,' sacristy. Having regained her composure, she gave Amanda her most dazzling smile. '_If Draco is going to pretend to be nice I could do the same and she's my best friend'_.

"Listen, I've got to get home." Now she was eager to get away. "I'll see you guys when you get back from Lake Pymatuning. Bye, Amanda. Bye, Hob."

'Oh, I've done it again. "I mean Mal…Draco." Face flaming, Hermione flapped a hand at them and took of at a run across the lawn in front of the school. She could feel Malfoy's eyes watching her. She didn't slow down till she reached Mill Road, then she walked her long…legged lope down the big hill to Route 21.

Hermione didn't notice her mothers red sports car until her mother tooted the horn and pulled up to the curb. Hermione looked up, startled. Her pale cheeks flushed as she approached the car.

"I left the office early today." Jenny told her daughter in greeting. "So I thought I'd wait at the school till your swim lesson ended and give you a lift. But you're early today, too."

"Coach Hawthrone let me out early." The lie slipped out effortlessly. Hermione slid into the front seat and snapped her seatbelt. She glanced nervously at jenny, who was dressed immaculately in cool beige linen, her brown hair moussed into careful disarray. Jenny always looked radiant. "I think Coach Hawthrone had a dentist appointment," Hermione improvised, then felt a flash of anger at herself for lying.

_Why can't I tell my mom the truth? I'm never going to swim, and that's that._

Hermione's mother was a partner in downtown law firm. She was very successful and enjoyed both her high…powered job and the fact that she was one of the very few women in her firm who had risen so fast and so far. She used her maiden name, Hayes, and was pleased that her secretary was a man. Her hours were usually long, and she brought casework home every night. She often left the house early in the morning, even before Hermione finished breakfast, and returned home around six in the evening. It was Hermione's job to get their dinner started. The two of them would chat over dinner and then do the dishes together.

Hermione wedged one foot at the side of the dashboard and glanced over at her mother. "So how come you left early?"

"I'm going to dinner with a new lawyer at the firm. So I just told my secretary to divert all my calls and decided I'd come home early to get ready."  
"Must be a very important new lawyer. Is it a man?"

"Yes," Jenny kept her eyes on the road.

Hermione looked at her mother and tried to smile naturally. "Rich and handsome?"

Jenny raised her eyebrow. "this is strictly a business dinner." Then she glanced over at Hermione and grinned. "I know you. You're wondering when I'll run off with Mr. Right, aren't you? Well. I promise I'll let you know when I find him." The grin turned into a smirk. "But don't you think one puppy…dog…eyed parent…in…love at the time is enough."

Hermione ignored this reference to her recently remarried father. Her mother was always laughing at her father.

Jenny stopped the car at a light. "So? How was it today?"

"What?" _I made a fool of myself, that how it was. And not just at the pool._

"Your lesson, of course. How did it go?"

"Fine I guess." _I cant believe I thought Malfoy was someone else._

Jenny accelerated smoothly. "You got in the water, I hope?"

"Of course, Mom."_ Why did I call him that bizarre name?_

"Did you even get your hair wet?"

Hermione frowned at her mother. "Of course! I even dried my hair afterward, just like a good sensible girl."

"All right." Jenny turned off Route 21 and drove around the bend into Valley. "I'm glad there's progress. Really , I wish you'd told me years ago that you couldn't swim. I would have sworn you could. I mean, we never went swimming together, but I just assumed…Well, we've been all through that. What really gets me is the lie. Forgery, Hermione! Really! And you with a mother in criminal law. " She pulled the car into their driveway and cut the engine. "If you're worried about something, I wish you'd talk to me about it. That's the way people solve their problems in this world. By talking things over and formulating solutions."

"You make everything into a business meeting." Immediately Hermione regretted her sharp tone. Her mother was only trying to help her.

Hermione escaped to her room and lay on the bed and burrowed her head into her pillow. Thank God it was Friday. No swim lessons tomorrow. Maybe she'd see Michael…go to a film or something Saturday night, if her mother let her go. She need to do something fun.

_I need to feel Hob's arms around me again…._

She sat up abruptly. Across the room on her desk lay the most recent letter from her father, still unanswered. _Maybe I should just go to Maine after all._

The phone on her bedside table jangled now, but even as she rolled over to answer it, the ringing stopped, her mother must of picked it up.

Then she heard footsteps running up the stairs. There was a perfunctory tap on the door before Jenny threw it open. She stood there hands on her hips. "You lied to me, Hermione! Again!"

"What do you mean?" But of course she knew.

"That was Coach Hawthrone on the phone." Jenny came into the room and sank into Hermione's bed. "She said you have refused all week to do anything more then get your feet wet."

"That's not true…I've gone up to my thighs." Hermione's stomach contracted at the memory.

"Your thighs!" Jenny face was flushed.

Hermione took a deep breath. She knew this would happen sooner or later. "I did get in at the shallow end, but that's all I've been able to manage." She shrugged , glancing up at jenny. "Look, I'm sorry."

"You should be ashamed of such silliness. Its infantile. You cant keep on this way."

Hermione covered her face with her hands. "I cant!" She had to take a stand this time. "You and Coach Hawthrone and Mrs. Higley don't understand. You cant make me! I cant even make myself!" Hermione dropped her head so her mother wouldn't see she was trying not to cry.

Jenny frowned. "Now look, pull yourself together. Stop acting like some hysterical child. I had no idea you had become this…weak."

Hermione cheeks were wet. There was a humming in her ears. 'look." she said very quietly. "I just have this feeling that I'll die if I go into the water. I know I will."

Jenny brushed her hair out of her eyes and glanced at her wristwatch. "Look, enough of this. Your dinner will be ready in a minute, and I've got to get going." She stood up. "Come down and eat."

Hermione bit her lip. She took a deep breath and forced the usual calm to come back over her. The tuneless humming in her ears faded away. She was in control again. "Okay, Mom." she said stoically.

Jenny stepped into the hall, then turned back. "But Hermione?"

"What?"

"No more lies. I don't like you hiding things from me. I want you back to normal."

Hermione flopped into her bed and lay back on the pillows, feeling battered. But as soon as she closed her eyes, Draco Malfoy face swam before her, his puzzled gray eyes watching her. She sat up abruptly, covering her ears to stop the sudden humming.

_Back to normal? But how?_

_A/N: Please review!_


	4. Michaels party

A/N: Harry and Ron is not dead. I might mention them later on but not really sure…any ideas? Its mainly about Hermione and Draco.

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or the characters, if you ever read dreadful sorry I'm going to combine the two so I don't own the plot either…

Fall to Pieces

Chapter 4

On Saturday morning when Hermione woke up and went to breakfast, the breeze through the open kitchen windows was already heavily scented with the rosemary from their little garden. The day would be hot.

Jenny was standing by the stove flipping pancakes. "Muggy, isn't it?" She greeted Hermione, sitting a glass of orange juice next to Molly's plate. "How did you sleep, sweetheart?"

Hermione groaned. Her night had been broken again by the dream. She had struggled awake at four-thirty, then forced herself to lie awake till dawn. She didn't trust sleep.

Jenny frowned, spatula in hand. "Poor baby."

_Poor impractical, fanciful baby. That's what she means._ Hermione hastened to change the subject. "How was your date-I mean, your business meeting-last night?" She had gone to bed long before her mother returned.

Jenny brightened. "Imagine two lawyers at a business dinner actually having fun! His name is jerry. It's going to be nice to have somebody working with me who isn't one of the old guard."

"Jenny and Jerry. Pretty cute." teased Hermione. "Sounds like you were made for each other."

" Like father, like daughter." moaned Jenny, sitting down across the table from Hermione. "Just try to keep such goopy thoughts to yourself. I'm trying to eat."

Hermione dribbled syrup over her pancakes, then picked up her fork. _well,_ she decided, _its nice that one of us is happy._ Her head was aching from lack of sleep. The dream this time had been even worse then the others. Same house, same long hall, same sense that something awful waited in the room at the end-but this time the awful humming became clearer. It was as if someone hidden out of sight were turning up to sing that old folk song about the miner, forty-niner, and his daughter. No words, just humming , but Hermione couldn't get the tune out of her mind all night. And even now, at the breakfast table, the words were running through her head.

_"Oh my darlin', oh my darlin', oh my darlin'. Clementine.--"_

The telephone rang. Jenny answered it, then handed the receiver across the table to Hermione. It was Michael, calling to see if Hermione could come to a party at his house tonight. She cover the receiver and raised her brows at Jenny. "Mom? Michael's having a party at his house tonight and--"

"Go ahead," nodded Jenny. "I'm going to be gone myself tonight, as it turns out."

Hermione hesitated a moment to push down her unease before stepping into the pounding shower and pulling the curtain shut. She had always avoided baths, but lately showers brought on the same sense of danger. Being forced to take swimming lessons was making her water phobia worse. Now even the thought of raindrops on her head made her nervous. She lathered her hear and scrubbed the fragrant suds into thick white foam, then rinsed quickly and turned the shower in great relief. She hesitated before inspecting her face in the mirror over the sink. Was her hair getting lighter? And her eyes? She blinked and the reflection seemed to correct itself.

She rubbed some moisturizer into her skin, then toweled her hair dry and combed it out. She carefully pulled it back into a sensible braid down her back.

But as she turned away, it happened again: the mirror flickered-glimmered-like the surface of water. For a second the other face looked back, and Hermione ran, gasping down the hall to her room.

She threw open the closet, pulling her favorite blue sundress off the hanger.

_Calm down. Don't be silly. It was nothing._

She drove Jenny's little red sports car to Michael's house and parked on the street. He met her at the door and led her into the living room to say hello to his parents, then out to the back garden, were the party was in full swing.

The patio was illuminated by the flickering lanterns strung above the grass on a clothesline. Music thumped loudly from Michael's sound system. Some people were dancing on the brick patio, some were clustered by the picnic table, and others were lingering in pockets of darkness by the bushes. The overall swimming pool was lit softly from beneath the water, glowed in the dusk like a topaz.

Hermione spied some peopled she knew and crossed through the chattering flock of teenagers to get to them. "Hi, you guys!"

"Are you coming to the play?" Ginny was playing Nancy in West River's Production of Oliver! Next weekend.

"I wouldn't miss it for anything." Hermione answered. "It's my vicarious thrill, you know, listening to you sing. I wish I could."

Lavender, who was stage manger, shook her head. "Must be the only thing you can't do, then, in that case. You're brilliant."

Ron chuckled. He had a naturally unpleasant laugh, which Hermione felt made him perfectly suited for the part of Bill Sykes in the musical. "Singing's not the only thing Hermione cant do, or so I hear." He leaned towards her and put a hand on her bare arm. "How're the swim lessons going with old Hawthrone, Hermione?"

"Oh shut up, Ron." Said Harry easily. "I've seen you in swim class struggling to keep your own head above water."

"Yeah, but at least I haven't resorted to forgery to cover it up," he retorted.

There was a moment of silence, broken by laughter from the other side of the patio.

People started dancing fast. She danced with Harry, Michael, Dean, Neville-even with Ron.

"Hey, Hermione, I didn't mean anything, really," Ron said during a slow song. "It's just novelty of seeing a top student in trouble that fascinates me. Makes you more human."

"They don't come any more human then me." Hermione bantered, but she moved slightly away from his close embrace and scanned the crowd for Harry.

Instead, she saw Amanda waving from the double doors of the house. "Hey, Hermione!"

_Amanda? Here? What happen to Lake Pymatuning?_

Hermione's heart beat faster as Draco stepped in front of Amanda. She felt her face flush and lowered her head into Ron's shoulder.

"I like that." He breathed into her hear. He hummed along with the music until the song ended and she broke away. "Hey, Hermione! Let me get you something to drink."

Ron followed her over to the tubs full of ice and soft drinks. They stood together at the edge of the patio, sipping cokes. She watched as Amanda was introducing her cousin to all of her friends.

She saw Draco turn from a group of kids by the pool, laughing, and she felt horribly hollow. But what did she ever done to Draco Malfoy?

Hermione moved closer to Ron and finished her soda. She breathed deeply. But suddenly Draco was in front of her, "want to dance." His gray eyes were level with her own, smiling at her.

"Nah." Ron answered for her. "Hermione hates to dance, she rather go swimming, right Hermione?"

"Wrong," she said frowning at him.

Hermione felt like she needed to be with Draco right now. But why? Hermione and Draco left Ron and moved into the patio for a slow dance.

"I thought you were going to be away this weekend." Said Hermione as they pushed through the dancers to clear a space.

He explained that Amanda's father had unexpected work. Inexplicably, a wave of sadness assailed her again.

"I'm sorry!" she murmured.

"What for?" he said. "You didn't step on my feet or anything."

"Oh, I thought I had." She covered up her slip quickly.

He tightened his arms around her, and she rested her head on his shoulder, which felt solid and strong beneath the fabric of his shirt. She raised her head when the song ended .

An another slow song came on and they danced together again. She turned her head and rested her ear against his chest. She could hear his heart thudding steadily and felt relieved and comforted by the sound. Draco began humming against her hair. She closed her eyes, breathing in the scented evening air, feeling more peaceful then she felt all week. But then, after a moment, she realized he was humming a different tune. Huskily, he gave it words, his breath puffing gently against her ear: "Oh my darlin', Oh my darlin,' oh my darlin', Clementine-"

She pulled away from him. "Don't sing that!" She cried and backed into another couple dancing.

A/n: please review!

Here's a sneak peak of what to happen next:

"How am I going to teach you anything if you wont even get into the water?" Draco said.

"I admit it's a problem." She smiled through her heart was pounding. She tried for a joke, "Thousand before you have tried and failed."

He stripped off his shirt and jumped into the pool in his shorts. The water slapped out into the tiles. Hermione shuddered.

"Jump in. You can do it."

"No." Why didn't she just walk away? There was a change in the air that had only partly to do with her fear. Something about Draco drew her, but something equally strong now warned her away.

He splashed some water onto her feet. "Last chance." When she didn't respond, he began the song again. He sang softly, gently, splashing water onto her feet in time to the tune. "Oh my darlin', oh my darlin', oh my darlin'. Clementine. You are lost and gone forever, dreadful sorry, Clementne!"

She leapt back out and screamed at him. "You shut up!"

He vaulted out of the pool in a single motion and towered over her. "Get in the pool," he said in a low voice…


	5. In the pool you go

A/N: Thanks for the 2 people who reviewed :) Its going to get more better i hope :)

Fall to Pieces

Chapter 5

Draco reached out and grabbed her arm. "What's wrong?"

She couldn't look at him. "It's pretty late." she felt raw. The darkening evening pressed around her like a gloom of the hallway in her dream.

Draco looked at her quizzically. "Will you turn into a pumpkin? or what?" He followed her off the patio into the lawn. "Please don't go. Did I do something? Whatever it was, I'm really sorry."

"That song you were humming-"She fought back the panic and looked up at him. "I heard it in my dream last night. It was awfaul- a nightmare." She swallowed. "I'm being a jerk, I know."

He was frowning. "That is weird. I mean, I don't know why I sang it. It just came into my head." He tried to make a joke. "I know my voice isn't great, but it never sent anyone running in terrror before!"

Before Hermione could respond, Amanda called to them. "Hey, Hermione, Draco, come on over here!" she had changed into her bathing suit and was standing by the pool with some of the other kids.

"You go ahead." said Hermione

"I don't want you to leave." His gray eyes looked into her brown ones."Please dont leave yet. Let's just go see what she wants. Then we can dance again- and i promise I wont sing."

" I didn't bring a suit, anyway. I don't like to swim. I guess Amanda told you?"

"She just said you got in trouble for not taking a swim test or something."

He reached for her hand and led her across the lawn. "You mean you really can't swim at all? I could teach you easily, you know. We could start tonight." He pointed at the swimming pool.

"No thanks." _No way!_

"this water's heated, so it'll probably be nicer."

The hollow guilt formed in her stomach again. "I'm so sorry," she told him.

He looked at her puzzled.

"I mean, I'm sorry-sorry that you don't likecold water." The more she tried to make sense, the more idiotic she sounded. _What? Sorry about what?_

Amanda laughed. "No water could be warm enough to tempt Hermione." She nudged Hermione.

Draco squeezed Hermione's hand. "Look, we'll start easy." He tugged her over to the side of the pool. "First thing we do is,we sit here at the side of the pool-like this."

She shook his hand off hers. "Listen, you don't understand."

"Come on, just stick your feet in. You don't have to get your dress wet."

She bit her lip, then kicked of her sandals and sat down cautiously, bunching the skirt of her sundressup around her thighs. The warm water closed around her long legs. The sight of them, pale beneath the surface of the water, made her shiver.

"Great! Okay, now just dip your hand in the water. Just one hand. Like this." He stuck his fingers in the water and wiggled them. "See?"

She kept her arms folded stubbornly. Enough is enough.

"We'll have you off the high dive in no time," teased Draco. Or maybe he wasn't teasing.

She felt ridiculous sitting fully clothed at the side of the pool while this boy cheered her on and Amanda watched with an expression of encouragement.

Draco's voice grew soft, deeper. "Come on, now both hands in. Like this."

She dropped her hands into the water next to his, waved her fingers around under the surface. And under her own surface, the ever-present lump of fear expanded.

"Now down to the elbows." His face was impassive. She leaned forward slightly and lowered her arms. "Good job," he said.

"Way to go, Hermione," shouted Ron from the diving board. He held his nose and danced at the end of the board. Harry stepped up behind him and shoved. Ron plunged out of sight, then came up sputtering and laughing. He swam to the shllow end and stood. "See?" he appealed to Hermione. "Easy as pie." Then he splashed away to chase one of the girls.

Hermione pulled her arms from the water. She held them, dripping away from her sides. "There. Lesson's over."

Draco crouched beside her. "Hang on a sec." She was very aware of his bulk, his strength. "Listen, I know your afraid," he whispered. "Lots of kids are at first, you'd be surpised. But I really want to help you."

"I don't think so." She stood, norrowing her eyes as she saw Draco and Amanda exchange a look. The smell of chlorine was very strong. She moved her shoulders up and down and rubbed the tight muscles at the back of her neck.

"How am I going to teach you anything if you wont even get into the water?" Draco said.

"I admit it's a problem." She smiled through her heart was pounding. She tried for a joke, "Thousand before you have tried and failed."

He stripped off his shirt and jumped into the pool in his shorts. The water slapped out into the tiles. Hermione shuddered.

"Jump in. You can do it."

"No." Why didn't she just walk away? There was a change in the air that had only partly to do with her fear. Something about Draco drew her, but something equally strong now warned her away.

He splashed some water onto her feet. "Last chance." When she didn't respond, he began the song again. He sang softly, gently, splashing water onto her feet in time to the tune. "Oh my darlin', oh my darlin', oh my darlin'. Clementine. You are lost and gone forever, dreadful sorry, Clementne!"She leapt back out and screamed at him. "You shut up!"

He vaulted out of the pool in a single motion and towered over her. "Get in the pool," he said in a low voice.

"Way to go." shouted Ron from the deep end.

"Hooray for Hermione." called someone else. "It's swim time!"

Hermione turned to run, but he caught her by the shoulders. "Get in, or I'll throw you in."

"Go to hell."

Then his arms were lifting her-one around her shoulders, one under her knees. He carried her without effort. She screamed and beat him with her fists. He flinched at the blows but stepped closer to the pools edge.

"Help me! Michael, Amanda, help me! Help!" Screamed Hermione. She saw her friend s laughing. They didn't understand it wasn't a joke.

"It's all right," Draco called over to them, stuggling to keep his grip on Hermione.

"You're trying to kill me!" She wailed, striking him. She felt the salty wind rise mysteriously, blowing fiercely now all around them. The water of the pool-so close-grew choppy, rising in great white peaks of foam.

"You'll be fine. You'll be a regular"- Draco ducked his head as another of her blows hit his ear-"fish!"  
Then he let her out over the water and dropped her in.

She sank immediately, as if she had fallen from a great height. The water of the pool surged over her-and it was red, it was blood, it was blood foaming around her, filling her ears and eyes and nose and mouth, engulfing her.

She lay on the bottom of the pool, her ears roaring with the pressure of the water; her eyes were wide open, seeing not the blue-and-white tiles of the pools floor but, through the dark water, tangles of green. Seaweed in Michael's pool?

Hermione breathed deeply and her lungs filled. Just before all the red went to black, she looked up at the surface and saw lengths of broken wood and webs of net; she saw crates tumbling in the waves; she saw something like a round, patterened box, floating away.

A/n: here's a sneak peak of what happens next:

"Mom"- Hermione turend her head on the pillow to look at jenny-"the kids wouldn't help! They thought it was funny. They let Draco throw me in. I said I couldn't...I told them no, but they-"

"Shhh," said jenny. "I know, I know."

"I hate Draco!"

"I can't believe it," her father growled. "What kind of friends are they who would let some strange guy come to a party and nearly kill a girl?"

A/n: Please review!


	6. I never want to see you again

Fall to Pieces

Chapter 6

Somehow she knew it was a hatbox. It was floating away and she wanted it back. It contained not a hat but something precious. She reached out desperately, but her fingers grasped cloth rather then water. Hermione was spinning, first in water, then in space. Whirling and spinning, whirling and spinning, then setteling, coming to rest.

The blood in the water stopped roaring in her ears. And at first everything was very quiet.

Then Hermione heard her father's voice. "Hermione? Darling?"

And then the horrible song begain in her head:

'_oh my darlin', oh my darlin', oh my darlin', Clementine. You are lost and gone forever, dreadful sorry, Clementine,'_

Her mother's voice broke through:"Hermione? Wake up, dear. It's okay. You're okay now."

And she opened her eyes. It was hard to see her parents together through all the water. Her parents-together? Something must have happened. She blinked, and her vision cleared. "Mom?"

"Yes, I'm right here." Hermone felt a gentle pressure on her arm.

"And Dad, too?"

"I flew down as soon as your mom called me last night," her father said. She felt his big hand on her head, stroking her hair. "You've been going in and out of consciousness all day. We've been so worried."

"What happened to me?" But even as she asked, she remembered everything. Coach Hawthrone and the swim lessons. The nightmare about the house. Draco Malfoy and the water flowing in her lungs. She moaned.

"Shhh," murmured her father. "It's okay now. You're safe in the hospital, and everything is okay." He reached for the button by her bed to call the nurse. "But I think we'd better have the doctor back in here to check on you."

"But I'm fine! I mean, I'm fine-" Hermione thrashed on the bed.

"Pull yourself together." Jenny touched Hermione's hair again. "Everything is alright."

"I drowned."

"You nearly drowned." Her father's voice was tight.

"He threw me in-"

"Amanda told us, Hermione. She and her cousin saved your life."

"Mom-" Hermione turned her head on the pillow to look at jenny-"the kids wouldn't help! They thought it was funny. They just let Draco throw me in. I said i couldn't...I told them no, but they-"

"Shhh," said jenny. "I know, I know."

"I hate Draco."

"I can't believe it," Her father growled. "What kind of friends are they who would let some strange guy come to a party and nearly kill a girl?"

"OH, John, no one knew Hermione would react so badly. I remember telling Coach Hawthrone myself all Hermione need was to get into the water. I said if she could just get in once, she be over her fear." Jenny faltered unter his glare. "Will it seems logical, John."

"Well, you were wrong, werent you?"

Hermione was lying very still now under the white sheet. Her head ached behind her temples, and her mouth had a horrible, bitter test, fuzzy at the back of her throat. Her father had said that she'd been unconsicous, but she knew she had been dreaming about the house.

_She was wandering through the hallways, opening doors, and someone was humming that hideous Clemintine song. Suddenly there was a girl walking along beside her, a girl with hair in two light braids wound up on top of her head like a coronet.She wore a long gray skirt that swirled just above her ankles as they walked together towards the room at the end of the hall. Her cheeks were flushed, her dark eyes wild. She raised her hands, plums up, as if to show Hermione-What? In the dream Hermione shooked her head not understanding._

_But then the girl'ss hands were suddenly stained with blood, and she was crying, crying for someone to help- and Hermione broke away and ran back the way she had came, her legs pumping in slow motion, as if trying to tread water._

Now here she was , safe in the hospital. The girl in the house were only part of the nightmare. And she had not drowned after all.

"I'm so glad you're safe." Jenny reached for Hermione's hand were it lay limply on the white sheet.

Then John smiled and stroke Hermione's cheek. "Well, honey, you'll be happy about one thing, at least. You have a medical excuse."

Hermione's voice came out as a whispe. "You mean-no more lessons?"

"Not even one. The doctor said a reaction like yours means you have a real full-fledged phobia. And that's your medical excuse."

Jenny cleared her throat. "I'm not too happy about that diagnosis, actually, Hermione."

* * *

Hermione wasn't feeling very friendly towards the friends who stood idly by when Draco tossed her into the water. There had been a short article about her in the papers. The head line read:

**Near-Drowning at Teen Party: West River Academy Student Rivived by Swim Stars.**

The stars had been Amanda and Draco, of course-big-deal swimmers. How gallent of Draco to drag her off the bottom of the pool, Hermione thought sarcastically when she read the article. Sweet of him. It had been Amanda who rushed over and pumped out her lungs. But it had been Draco who gave mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

That didnt bear thinking about.

Draco had tried to see her twice in the hospital, but the first time Hermione had been sleeping and the second time she had pretened to be. Then he had called the day she went home from the hospital, but she signaled Jenny to say she coudlnt come to the phone. He kept on calling. John had spoken to him once or twice and told Hermione afterwards that the poor boy was very upset and eally seemed to need to talk. Jenny said Hermione was being silly. But Draco was the last person in the world she wanted to hear from.

John Granger stayed for two weeks after Hermione left the hospital, spending days with her while Jenny was at work.

The day after her father left, Hermione stayed home alone. She napped, read, watch a soap opera, and napped again. Whenever the phone rang, she let the answering machine take the call. Each time it was Draco: "Please talk to me, Hermione. I'm very, very sorry-an I really need to see you. Something very weird is going on."

"You'll have to see him sooner or later." her mother said when she came home. "It's been two weeks. And after all, he's Amanda's cousin."

"I'm finished with Amanda, too!" Said Hermione. "She knew he was going to throw me in. I don't want to see either one of them." Her best friend betrayal sat like a stone in Hermione heart.

Hermione stamped into the family room. She had missed the play but could still see it on video. She pushed the video cassette into the player and turned the volume up loud to drown out the sounds of Jenny in the kitchen making dinner. Soon she was lost in Oliver's story.

The door to the family door opened. "Can we eat in here." Hermione asked Jenny, not taking her eyes from the screen. "This is one of the best parts."

But it wasn't Jenny. Draco Malfoy stood just inside the door, his big hands clenched at his sides.

"What are you doing here?" She demanded, jumping up. "Mom! Did you let him in? I told you not to!"

Draco raised his hands. "Please, wait a minute. Hermione, I need to talk to you. Your mother said it was okay." He burshed his blonde hair off his forehead. "Just give me a few minutes."

"I have nothing to say to you."

"Then just listen. Please." He shut the door and leaned against it. "I just have to ask you one thing."

"What?" She crossed her arms.

"About what happened-at Michael's pool. I don't know what happened. I never ment to throw you in. I still can't believe I did it. It was just, suddenly, well...I dont know."

She stared at the televison.

Draco touched her arm tentatively with one finger. She flinched as if his finger burned her skin. "Hermione, that's not all. I mean, there's something else. It's driving me crazy, and it's got me so scared-I need to know. About the seaweed and-Hermione, what was that stuff in the water? Blood?

There was a roar of wind in her ears. She could not hear the television. She could only hear Draco's insistent voice.

"And what was that box? That round box?"

She couldn't believe what she was hearing. It was impossible that he had shared her hallucination. She shoved him aside, wrenched open the door, and creened through the ketchen, past Jenny at the stove and up the stairs to her room. She lay on her bed, clutching her pillow, dazed and numb. Through the pounding in her head she could hear the humming again.

The knocking on the door roused her. "I am not going to talk to you." She yelled. "Get it through your head, asshole."

"Hermione, it's me." Jenny voice was low. "I'm alone. Draco went home."

"I don't believe you mom. You tricked me. I told you I didn't want to see him."

"Honey, I thought it was best if you saw him. Now, please come down."

"No way. Just leave me alone." Hermione huggd her pillow.

There was a long silence. When Jenny spoke again there was a tremble in her voice, "Dinner's ready."

"I'm not eating." Hermione walked across the room and turned off her air conditioner. She was trembling so hard, she needed a warm blanket. After another long minute, she heard Jenny go downstairs. She undressed swiftly, thinking how very fregile her body felt. How very delicate. She burrowed in the back of her closet, then pulled out her winter bathrobe and wrapped herself up in it. She was all at once conscious of being the guardian of her body. It was up to her to make sure her body lasted well into advanced old age. Anad that ment staying way from Draco Malfoy, whatever it took.

A/N: here's a sneak peak on what is going to happen next:

"Hello dad?"  
"Molly! What a surpise!"

"Dad-listen, I've changed my mind. I do want to come see you and Paulette. Right away."  
"Hey, thats great. Why the sudden change of heart?"  
She clutched the reciever tightly, winding the cord around her hand. Her line to safety.

"I just decided I'd rather be with you."

"I'll admit I'm flattered. And relieved. But what does your mom say?"

A/N:Review!


	7. Leaving the day after tomorrow

A/N: thanks for the reviews :) but i hope i could have more ...

Fall to Pieces

Chapter 7

Hermione spent the next day up in her room reading old copies of National Geographic. In one issue there was an article about wildlife along the Maine coast. She studied the photographs with interest. She didn't wander downstairs until late in the afternoon, when her stomach was grwoing with hunger. Jennny was on the pohone in the kitechen. She hang up when Hermione came in and smiled uncertainly.

"Jerry just called and asked me to go see the Rodin exhibit at the art museum before dinner. He's invited you, too. How about it? I want you to meet him. He can pick us up in about tweenty minutes." When Hermione didn't answer, she walked over and gave her daughter an awkward hug. "Honey, are you all right?"

"I'm okay," Hermione answered faintly

Jenny looked doubtful. "Maybe I'd better stay home. You look funny."

"No, it's fine. Really, Mom. You go right ahead. I'm just tried, you wouldn't believe. I'm going to eat something then just hang out."

"But wouldn't you like to come with us? You like sculpture."

Hermione took a box of crackers from the cupboard and carried it to the family room. She flopped down on the couch. "Some other time, Mom."

Jenny followed her. "Do you want a pillow? Should I turn up the air conditioner?"

"No thanks," Hermione murmured. She felt she was behind a glass wall. Her mother's voice came to her only faintly. "I'm really fine. You have a good time." She flicked on the TV. Within seconds, it seemed, she was asleep. Or half asleep-for she heard the sound of the doorbell over the laugh track from the sitcom, heard her mother's voice in the kitchen and Jerry's deeper rumble. The door to the family room creaked open and she knew jen was looking in on her just the way she did when Hermione was sick. '_And maybe I am sick', _she thought. '_Maybe that's why everything seems so weird.'_

She heard them leave the house, heard Jerry's car in the driveway. And then nothing more. Eyes closed, she was floating. After a while she fell straight into the dream

_This time I can see that the walls of the hallway are paneled and the floor is covered with a thick Oriental carpet-all deep reds and browns. There the doors on both sides of the hallway, dark wood, with gleaming brass handles. I hover at the top of the wide staircase, looking down the hall. This time another girl floats beside me. She was wearing a long dress.blonde braids are wrapped around her head._

_There's a man's deep voice rumbling through the thick wooden door at the end of the hall. Then there's a shriek, high and keening, full of pain. Driven by a desperate urgency, I float down the hall and reach out for the doorknob. The girl right behind me, grabs my arm. "No!" she cries._

_But I shake her off as I know I must, and I push the door slowly open. The next cry I hear I recognize as my own._

_Oh, there is blood everywhere. On the bed sheets. On the woman who lies so still atop the coverlet. On the man who bends over the bed. He hears my scream and whirls around. His face above his dark beard is white. Teeth bared in a grimace, his spits words at me: "Now we've lost her. Damn you!"_

_Behind me, the girl is crying._

_I try to run, but my legs pump air. I must get away, must get away. And somehow I reach the stairs. At the bottom I catch sight of the ornate wall mirror and stop. The room spins dizzily around me and my stomach lurches with sick dread, for the face in the mirror is not my own but that face of the rosy-cheeked girl in the hall._

"Hermione! Come on, Hermione! Let us in."

She opened her mouth in a cry that wrenched her, finally, fully awake.

"Hermione, we just want to talk to you for a few minutes."

She sat up on the couch and saw Amanda and Draco tapping on the glass of the slidding door to the patio. She stared at them, twisting her hands together, trying to separate reality from the dream.

Amanda's wry smile was clear through the glass door. "It isn't every evening I make such an effort to talk to a friend," she called. "But I figure you're worth it."

Dazed, Hermione walked slowly over to the door, reached out a hand as if to open it, then instead grabbed the tie that released the blinds. She tugged hard. They clattered down from the ceiling, covering the glass, obscuring the trepassers from view.

"Hey!" Cried Amanda.

Hermione run to the kitchen and grabbed her mother's keys off the counter. Then, heart racing, she slipped out of the kitchendoor and ran out to Jenny's car. Thank God she and Jerry had driven off in his. Amanda's blue car was parked behind Jenny's in the driveway, but Hermione turned the key in the ignition, gunned the engine, and spun the wheel hard enough to make a tight turn onto the grass. In seconds she would be away from them.

Then she saw Draco running towards her across the grass. "Hermione! Hermione, wait."

In blind panic, she wrenched the wheel to the right and careened across the lawn, narrowly missing him. She spun down Valley Road toward route 21. "It's nothing to do with me!" She yelled at the top of her lungs.

She slowed to a safer speed as she neared the shopping center. _'Calm down, calm down,'_ she told herself. She would be absolutely fine just as long as Draco stay away from her. Just as long as no one mention water or blood, just as long as she stayed awake and on guard and didn't didn't let herself dream even for a second about old houses and long hallways. Or hatboxes. She was one hundred percent fine as long as she pushed from her mind the memory of the face she saw in the mirror-the face that was not her own.

How much finer could anyone get?

When she was stopped at the traffic light back near the shopping center again, she saw Amanda's blue car turn the corner. Amanda was driving with Draco beside her. At the sight of him, Hermione stomach felt hollow again. But he should be the one feeling quilty-after what he'd done to her!

She heard the whisper in her mind: _And after what you did to him!_

She accelerated with a lurch and zoomed down Route 2, right into the next town. After tweenty more minutes of drving aimlessly through unfamiliar nighborhoods, she felt considerable calmer, and headed home. When she let herself in the kitchen door, the house was queit. But the flashing red light on the answering machine didn't have to be loud to get her attention. It made no sound, but flashed there, on and off, with the impack of an emergency siren at top volume.

Hermione threw the keys into the counter. She rewound the tape on the answering machine without listening to the message and ran upstairs. She flopped across her bed and stared up at the ceiling, willing the calm of her room to quiet her pounding head. Was she really cracking up? Jenny would be ashamed.

Downstairs, the doorball rang. And rang. And rang.

She pulled her pillow over her head and waited until Draco and Amanda went away again.

Finally, all was quiet. She started to cry. She had to get away from here. Draging herself out of bed, she crossed the room to her desk and picked p her adress book. She sat on the edge of her bed and reached for the phone on the bedside table. She dialed numbly, staring out the window. Dusk had fallen.

John answered on the first right.

"Hello, Dad?"

"Hermione! What a surpise!"

"Dad-listen, I've changed my mind. I do want to come see you and Paulette. Right away."

"Hey, that's great. Why the sudden change of heart?"

She clutch the receiver tightly, winding the cord around her hand. Her line to safety.

"I"ll admit I'm flattered. And relieved. But what does your mom say?"

"Oh, you know Mom." Hermione hesitated. Then she tried to make her voice light. "She'd rather I stayed here, actually. She's got me all signed up for swimming lessons at the rec center."

There was a slience. Then john cleared his throat. "I see," he said. "Yes, I think I'll make those plane reservations right away. Don't you worry, honey. You're on your way to nice, peaceful Hibben, Maine. There's not a rec center for a handred miles."

They talked another few minutes. In the background Hermione could hear Paulette's giggle of excitement. By the time Jenny returned from her date, Hermione and John had settled all the details of the arrangements: Hermione would leave on Monday, the day after tomorrow. Her tickets would be waiting at the airport.

That night Molly slept Dreamlessly.

Hermione pressed her forehead to the window and stared down at the cleveland area as it disappeared beneath a fluffy layer of clouds. As the plane whisked her to Boston on the first leg of her journey, she closed her eyes, and muted hubbub from all the other passengers receded. She felt the vibration of the aircraft through her body. Taking a few deep breaths and rubbing the back of her neck, she resolved not to think about anything but the restful vacation that layed ahead. She would forget all about Michael's surpise at her sudden change in plans when she called to tell him her new summer address. She would forget about Jenny's annoyance and the fact that she had not called Amanda to say good-bye. She resolved especially not to think about Draco Malfoy.

.:Flash back:.

Her mother had not been pleased when she'd learned of Hermione's plan to leave. She seem angry that John made the fight arrangements, but Hermione suspected the anger was really at her for having arranged her escape.

"You're running scared," Jenny told her, shaking her head. "It's weak, Hermione." She was sitting on the edge of Hermione's bed while Hermione threw her clothes into two suitcases, and she reached out her hand to smoothed one of the rupled T-shirts. "Honey, I'd really rather you stayed here for another month. Take swimming lessons during the day, go out with your friends at night-then fly up to see your dad when you've gotten yourself back together. Running away won't help any."

Hermione had taken a deep breath and replied firmly. "Look, Mom. I miss Dad like anything, and i want to see his new house. I want to meet Paulette-and I'll write you all the details so you can have a good laugh. Okay?"

Jenny shugged. "What can i say? You don't fool me for a second, and you're taking the coward's way out. I want you to promise me one thing. Promise me you'll learn to swim while you're there."

"I promise." She'd promise anything for the chance to be handreds of miles away from Draco Malfoy

.:End Flash Back:.

A/N: please review!next chapter will be up soon :)


	8. Meeting the step mother

Fall to Pieces

Chapter 8

In Boston she caught her connecting flight to Bangor, Maine. The plane was uncrowded, and this time Hermione had two seats to herslef. She sat by the window and leafed through the magazines provided by the airline. Shortly after take-off, an elderly man lurched down the aisle toward the toilets in the back of the plane. He was shaking, and the woman directly beheind him kept a firm grip on his shoulders. She was wearing a gray skirt and white blouse but it had the official air of someone in uniform. _Maybe a daughter,_ thought Hermione idly._But probably a nurse. Was the old guy going to be sick?_

Hermione watched them pass. Ten minutes later they made their slow way up the aisle again and came to a halt next to Hermione's seat, their passage blocked by a woman reaching for her sweater in the overhead compartment. The man peered down at Hermione and said hello.

"Hello" She rsponded with a smile.

"A plane's no proper place for a man nor a beast." He told her."I prefer to travel by boat myself. Don't you?"

"I like solid ground best of all." She answered with a smile. He reminded her of somoebody, somebody she liked, but she couldn't think who. The old man nodded, then hesitated as if he'd like to settle in next to her for a good chat, but as the woman in the aisle put on her sweater and sat down again, his companion directed him to their seats just in front of Hermione.

Hermione wondered fleetingly weather he lived in Maine or was just going to visit, then dismissed him from her thoughts. She turned back to the window. There wasn't much to see-just a steadily darkening sky.

The plane circled over Bangor, then touched down smoothlyand stop at the terminal. Hermione reached up into the overhead compartment for her blue backpack. The old man asked her to hand down his carry-on bag, as well. She glanced down at the top of his head with a smile. "Don't get up," she said." Just tell me which one it is."

"Black leather satchel," He said. He coughed; it sounded like a bark. Hermione carefully lifted the back bag down and set it on his lap. "It's got all my medicine inside. I won't make it home without it."

"He'll be fine," said the woman, speaking for the first time. "Likes to make a bit of a fuss, thats all."

The old man winked at Hermione. "somebody meeting you here, my girl?"

"Yes," she told him. "My dad."

The man nodded. She said good-bye and moved down the aisle. It was funny, she tought, how many poeple you come into contact with in a lifetime-or even a day- who don't matter to you at all. You'll never see them again. They don't have any impact on your life, nor you on theirs. And yet sometimes a random encounter turns out to be one of the most important moments of your life.

It had happen like that for John and Paulette- a chance encounter on a plane when John was flying home from a business trip to California and Paulette was traveling from her home in California to New York to atten a friend's wedding. Fate had seated them next to each other. Paulette inadvertently splashed her apple juice on John's lap when the plane hit turbulence, and he dumped a forkful of chicken kiev into her sleeve. They apparently had a marvelous time mopping up an apoliogizing-and were married a few months later. Hermione hoped he'd be happier with Paulette then he'd been with Jenny.

Hermione parents had been deivorced for 5 years when John met Paulette. In all that time he rarely dated. They married out in California on Valentine's day, almost on the spur of the moment, without telling their families until afterwards.

Could that be Paulette now? A short, slim woman wearing jeans and a green T-shirt was waving frantically as Hermione walked down the ramp to the gate. The woman was small-boned, with Red shoulder length hair. Yes it had to Paulette-Hermione recognized her from the wedding pictures John had sent. But where was he?

"Hermione? Hermione!" Paulette ran forward and embraced her, squeezing tightly. She was a full head shorter then Hermione, "at last."

Hermione stepped back, smiling politely. "Hello, Paulette. Where's my dad?"

"Oh, dear, I don't want you to panic, but there's been a accident." Her voice was high and breathless, and Hermione felt a sudden image of her father dead from some terrible car crash.

"Oh, no-"

"He fall off a ladder this afternoon while we were pulling down the old wallpaper in the dinning room and broke his left ankle. Poor baby." She looked up at Hermione with round blue eyes while passengers moved around them toward the baggage claim. "God, you're tall! johnny said you were, of course, but I didn't know he ment really tall." She giggled." And such brown eyes. I love your long hair. Do you ever do french braids? I'll fix your hair for you tomorrow if you like."

Relieved that John was still alive, Hermone ignored the comments about her appearance. Jenny always said people shouldn't make perosnal remarks. "So is Dad in a cast?" She asked.

"You can be the very first person to sign it. We were at the hospital for ages today. Johnny's in bed, waiting to see you. We'd no sooner got back from the hospital then it was time for me to leave for the airport."

"But is Dad all right?" asked Hermione. "Can he walk with crutches?" They started moving along with the crowd, heading towards the baggage claim to pick up Hermione's suitcases.

"Oh, he'll be able to hobble around, my poor Johnny. But not tonight. The doctor gave him some sort of really strong painkiller, and it has kind of knocked him out. I mean, he wasn't in any condition to drive all the way down to Bangor, and he might be asleep by the time we get home. But he's estatic that you're coming to stay." She reached over and squeezed Hermione's arm. "And so am I"

"Poor Dad," said Hermione. She realized she'd never seen John sick or ingured. "Well, I'll help take down the rest of the wallpaper, that's something i can do."

"That be super." Said Paulette. "You'll be able to reach almost as high as Johnny. But we don't want you to work too much while you're here. After your horrible accident, you probably need some R and R. Thats rest and relaxation. We want you to have fun."

"Thanks." Hermione saw her blue suitcases drop from the conveyor belt onto the baggage carousel and moved forward to pick them up. She noticed the old man standing with the dour woman and waved to them. The man looked confussed. The woman moved closer to the conveyor belt, searching for their bags.

"Here let me help you," said Paulette, reaching for one of Hermione suitcases.

"No, I'm fine."

"Well, give me the backpack, then," she said and giggled. "I may be tiny compared to you, but I'm strong as a packhorse. At least that's what Johnny says, and he knows everything about me!"

'_Spare me the details, please'._ Hermione followed Paulette out to the parking lot. Paulette took her keys out of her back pocket and unlocked the side door of a blue van.

"Here we are," she said, shoving aside rolls of wallpaper. Hermione lifted her suitcases inside next to several gallon-size cans of paint. "Lets hit the road." Paulette dropped Hermione's backpack insde and slammed the door. "It's a long drive, and I know you want to see your dad as soon as you can."

Hermione sat in front next to Paulette. They drove away from Bangor airport and headed northeast, up toward the coast. "Did you look Hibben up on a map?" Ask Paulette. "You probably couldn't find it! We're out on the edge of nowhere."

"Dad said it was pretty remote."

"Up here, unless your family has been here handred years, forget it. Your a foreigner. It takes some time geting used to."

Hermione murmured something in response. The fatigue that had pressed down on her so heavily at home assailed her again as they left the highway and drove along a narrow road through what seemed to be miles of dense forest.

"Would you just look at the trees?" Paulette said brightly. "I still cant get over how much of Maine is mostly forest. Two minutes out of a city and you're in the wilderness, pratically. There's bears in the woods. And, would you believe, moose?"

Hermione yawned, then covered her mouth." Sorry. I'm just so sleepy."

"Go ahead and have a nap, then. We'll be on Route 9 till we get to Machias. Then we have to go further over the coast, to starboard. Even then, it'll be a drive. Hibben is tucked between Bucks Harbor and Benson. I mean, barely on the map. You'll see. Way north, and then so far east, we're just about the first people in all America to see the sunrise each morning."

Hermione feigned sleep while Paulette rabbited on and on. The young woman's high, breathless voice rose and fell in a quick cadence almost like a song. Soon Hermione really did sleep, or figured she must have, because in no time at all, it seemed, she opened her eyes and found they were on a winding road. She could smell the sharp salt smell of the ocean even through the closed windows. Paulette's voice was still going strong:

"Well, theres a wharf, with a little pebbly beach, but the villagers keep thier fishing boats there, and the ferry docks there, too. So it's kind of not the best place to swim...But you won't be wanting to swim anway, right? I hope you won't feel afraid with so much water around."

Hermione couldnt see well in the dark van, but she sensed Paulette was peering over at her with worry. "No, as long as I don't have to go swimming in it, water's fine."

Suddenly the van lurched to the left and started up a rutted road. "We've got to do something about this," said Paulette. "Maybe gravel? Or should we pave it? What do you think?"

"Is this the road to your house?" asked Hermione."I didn't even see the town."

"Hibben's just farther along that road, but we turned off to go along the headland. We'll be home in a sec. Watch now-you'll see the house."

Hermione straightened up in her seat. They had left the coast road and were jerking along a dirt road lined with evergreen tress. Hermione could see them outside the van window, black shapes whipping back and forth in the sea wind that reached all the way up here in the headland. Ahead of them were trees gave way to a tangle of overgrown grass. And rising out of the dark grass was the house.

It was a massive shadow with stone steps leading up to a wide porch in front. Lights burned in several windows like a lighthouse beacons through the night.

Hermione's contentment vanished.

"We've got to buy a tractor mower to deal with all this grass," Paulette was saying. "Another thing to put on my list."

Hermione watched the blowing grass pressed and her hands to her mouth to contain her sudden cry of-something. Fear? Not exactly. But as they stopped in front of the porch and Paulette cut the engine, Hermione felt her body trembling slightly and thought: _'I've been here before!'_


	9. Same hallway and seeing dad

Fall to Pieces

Chapter 9

But that was impossible.

"Home sweet home," trilled Paulette. "Let's run in and and see if my wonderful, sweet Johnny has been knocked out by his painkillers yet. We can bring your stuff in later.

She jumped out of the van and ran lightly up the steps of the porch, then stopped and waited for Hermione. Hermione unlatched her seatbelt slowly and opened her door. '_whats wrong with you?'_ She asked herself.

"What is it, Hermione?"

"Nothing." She stepped up onto the porch after Paulette, fighting down her growing unease. Paulette led the way into a big, paneled hallway with a staircase leading straight up ahead of them to a landing with windows There was a narrow table against one wall, with a lamp on it sending out a welcoming glow. Several closed doors led off the hallway into other rooms. A drop cloth and buckets of paint sat on the floor next to the stairs. The house smelled old and musty, overlaid with the sharp freshness of new paint.

"I'll showy ou around after we say hi to your dad," said Pauletee, flicking on the light at the foot of the stairs. "Watch out for the mess." She stepped over a wallpaper roll on the first step and headed up. "There are eight bedrooms, can you believe it? We'll use five or six for guests and keep the rest for ourselves."

Hermione followed, her stomach tense. Somehow she knew it was coming, sensed it, but didn't know what to do to stop it. The fear, along wiht the exhaustion, had not been left behind in Battleboro Heights after all. Both had followed her here. At the top of the landing the stairs curved to the left, she climbed them after Paulette's light step with heavy dread.

She clenched her teeth so hard that her gasp sounded only in her head. Straight ahead of her stretched the oak-paneled hallway. There were four doors along either side. Their brass dorknobs gleamed in the soft light from the overhead chandeliers. And at the end of the hall was a door standing open. Hermione sotpped.

She closed her eyes, then opened them, but the hallway looked the same. _It was_ the same. She pressed her hands over her eyes to blot out the sight of the hallway before her.

"What, Hermione?" Paulette put her hand on Hermione's arm. "Whats wrong?"  
"It's the hallway from my dream." Hermione whispered, eyes closed.

"Oh, wow!" said Paulette worriedly. "What dream?"

John's voice boomed from the end of the hall. "Hermione? Paulette? Is that you?"

"We're home, my love!" called Paulette. "Be right there!"

At the sound of John's familiar voice, Hermione uncovered her eyes. She clenched her hands into fists at her sides-they were shaking badly as the old man's on the plane. She took a heaving breath to calm herself.

"Hey, save the tour for later! Just get in here and let me kiss my daughter," bellowed John from the end of the hall. "Or i swear I'll drag myself out of this confounded bed and-"

"We're coming, Dad!" called Hermione. She hurried ahead of Paulette down the hallway to the door at the end, stealing herself as she stepped into the room. She fully expected to see the same bed where the woman had lain covered in blood, where the man had turned to her, angry and accusing. But no, the bed was against the wall opposite the windows. And it was a different bed, of course, and the person lying in it wasn't a woman at all but her own father, his ankle encased in a white cast and lying raised on a pillow. There was no blood anywhere.

"Dad!" Hermione ran to him with a glad cry.

"It's great to see you, honey." He said, hugging her. "I could just kick myself for falling off that damn ladder. What bad timing!"

"I'm just glad you're okay."

"Oh, I'm fine. But my paper-stripping days are over for a while. Six weeks, looks like." He pulled her down on the bed and reached out to hand to draw Paulette over. Paulette took his hand and stood at the side of the bed, smoothing his hair.

"My two ladies," he said, grinning. "Together at last. Well, Hermione? Was I right? Isn't Paulette a wonder?"

"Yes," said Hermione, surreptitously peering all around the room. She was still trembling.

"And Hermione is everything you said she was." said Paulette. She stroked Johns face. "Poor Lamp Chop, you look totally shattered. How about if I take Hermione on a house tour and then get her settled for the ngiht? You just go to sleep now, and we can all talk in the morning."

He closed his eyes. "It's just this pain medication they gave me. It knocks me out."

"Hermione's going to be here a long time," Paulette said reassuringly. She headed for the door. "Coming Hermione? Let's get you something to drink, at least." She turned back to John. "Can I get you anything, my poor, battered beloved?"

Even through her daze, Hermione had to wince at Paulette's goo-goo voice. Jenny would be on the floor laughing.

John kept his eyes closed. "Nothing for me, Puppy. Just take good care of Hermione."

"Good ngiht, Dad." Hermione said softly, and followed Paulette back into the hallway. They didn't go back down the main stairs but instead headed down a steep, uncarpeted flight at the back of the house, ending up in a big, old kitchen with stained red lioleum on the floor.

Paulette closed the door to the back stairs firmly, then gestured to the cahir at the round table. "Here, sit down and make yourself cozy. What do you want? How about lemonade? I'm afraid I don't have any Coke. That stuff isn't good for you."

"No, really, I'm fine."

"I'm having a cup of herbal tea join me?"

"Sure."

Paulette bustled around the big kitchen, chattering as she asembled her tea things and put the water on to boil. "Can you believe the size of this kitchen? Of course, there must of been servents once. It's a challenge to make a meal here, with the fridge over in one corner and this big old stove over here, and the sink over there by the windows! They sure didn't know about efficient meal-making then, did they? Then again you had to keep your sevents busy, I guess. After we finish papering the downstairs, we're going to start remodeling this kitchen. I like old things, if they usable. But i don't reallly go for vintage just because. You know?"

Hermione nodded, hardly listening. She was looking around the kitchen, shivering a little despite the warm night air breezing in through the screened window over the sink.

_The children hung their coats on hooks by the back door._

This knowledge came to her, unbidden. But-what in the world? What children?

Paulette held up a china mug patterend with roses. "Like this? I found it in one of the cupboards. It was probably there for years. This house was empty for a long time before we moved in."

Hermione sat still, feeling lumpish and numb while Paulette flitted on fairy feet around the big room. She tried to force some of the tension out of her muscles by taking slow breaths. She thought of Jenny, at home now, probably watching a video. Maybe Jerry was there, too. For an instant she longed to be with them.

She'd been desperate to get away from home, desperate to come to this safe heaven. And yet, one glance down that hallway had told her this was no heaven at all.

finally the tea was brewed to Paulette's satisfaction. She carried the small teapot to the table. Then she opened a thin canister and arranged some cookies on a plate. She set it in front of Hermione. "There. Mint tea from the mint growing right in our own garden. And homemade oatmeal raisin cookies-specailly made with love for my only stepdaughter in the world!"

Paulette pulled out a chair and sat at the table across from Hermione. She poured them cups of tea and watched intently until Hermione took a cookie and bit into it. "It's good? You like it?" Her voice was eager, her blue eyes sparkling.

Hermione nodded.

"And do you like the house?" She frowned. "What did you man about a dream you head?"

Hermione hesitated. No sense letting this nice woman decide on the very first night that she had a neurotic stepdaughter. "I like the house," she said. "It's just that it was a shock, at first, because I've had dreams about a long hallway-sort of like the one upstairs." She reached for another cookie, half-convinced now that the hallway was only similar to the one in the dreams. Not identical. A lot of big houses have long hallways.

"Were they good dreams?" Paulette studied her. "Or bad?"

Hermione finished her cookie, "how about that house tour now?"

A/N:I update soon. and i thought i'd leave the house tour until the next chapter. please review! and im sorry if there's any misspellings...nobody's perfect...


	10. the house tour

Hermione finished her cookie. "How about that house tour now."

Paulette hesitated, then stood and carried their cups to the sink without another word. Hermione suspected it cost the chatty woman quite a lot to hold back zillions of questions she probably wanted to fire at Hermione, and Hermione liked her all the more.

She followed Paulette out of the kitchen, pressing back the flash of -something -that assailed her as they moved into the front hallway and saw the stair case again. Recognition? The stairs looked like the ones she had run down in the dream when she saw the other girl's face in the ornate mirror. Surreptitiously she glanced at the wall, then gasped when she saw the brighter square on the faded old wall paper. Something had hung there once.

Probably only an old picture.

"Are you okay?" asked Paulette anxiously.

"Of Course!"

They walked past the stairs into a large, high-ceilinged room with long-windowed French doors at both ends and a fireplace with a carved oak mantel in the center of the far wall. "The living room," announced Paulette. "Or should I say the parlor?"

Hermione could imagine it had been a gracious room once, but now, uncarpeted and empty of furniture, it seemed to be waiting for someone to bring it back to life. Paulette bubbled with excitement as she told Hermione her plans for the house.

"We want to furnish it with antiques from the period when the house was first built. Mid-nineteenth century. Johnny and I have been combing the flea markets and auctions around here. Now that he's hurt his ankle, maybe you'll come with me."

"Sure." If she threw herself into the renovations, she wouldn't think about hallways or patches of wallpaper where maybe a mirror had hang.

From the living room they moved to a large, formal dinning room, also empty of furniture. A stepladder lay on its side on the plastic ground cloth specked with wall paper paste. An overturned bucket of paste had spilled onto the cloth and spattered on the floorboards as well. "The scene of the accident!" proclaimed Paulette. "This where your daddy was working when he fell-my poor darling. I didn't even have a chance to clean up."

"I'll help you." Hermione stepped carefully around the mess. "He's lucky he didn't break both ankles."

"We'll clean up tomorrow." Paulette sighed. 'I'm afraid I blame myself. I was holding the ladder, but then the phone rang and I went to get it-and that's when he fell."

"It wasn't your fault." Hermione said comfortingly.

Paulette led Hermione into the glass-walled room with five sides. "This is called the conservatory," she said , flicking on the lights. "Can you imagine how gorgeous it would be once we get some big plants in it? I want it really lush. It will be a great place to serve our guests their breakfasts."

In the daytime, Hermione supposed, there would be a panoramic view from this room over the entire headland. But now, in the dark, it was just an odd shaped, empty room with dirty glass walls.

Paulette led her through the butler's pantry. ("Too bad it didn't come equipped with a butler," Paulette giggled.) and into a small, bare room with wide wooden floorboards and build-in corner cupboards. "This is the servants' dining room. Can you imagine having so many maids that they had their own dining room? We'll probably turn this into a playroom for the baby. The guests' kids could use it, too. We want to cater to families, you know. Make them feel right at home- or even better then at home."

"Did you say 'Baby'?" asked Hermione.

"Ooh!" Paulette clapped her hands over her mouth, her eyes twinkling. "I'm not supposed to say anything! Johnny wants to tell you himself."

"You and dad are having a baby?" A thrill of excitement banished the lingering fear.

"Yes! Isn't it super? But don't tell Johnny I told you, He'll tell you tomorrow. You've got to act surprised! I shouldn't have let it slip, and I'm not going toe tell you another thing until we're with Johnny."

They circled back through the kitchen into the front hallway, Hermione thoughts on the new sister or brother she'd be having. How soon would it be born? She scrutinized her skinny stepmother and thought maybe there was the slightest swell to her belly under the T-shirt. What great news!

Another door off the main hallway led to the dark-paneled room much like the parlor, with French doors leading out to a side porch. Built-in bookshelves lined all four walls, extending even around the fireplace. The shelves weren't completely empty- there were moving boxes pushed into the lower ones. Paint flaked off the high ceiling. Bits of it lay on the floorboards. "The library," announced Paulette. "Won't it be beautiful once we unpack our books? Not that we have enough to fill all the shelves, but we'll order some, or join a book club or something."

"Get a big library table for the alcove at the other end," suggested Hermione. She knew exactly the sort of table it should be: rectangular, made of oak, with carved legs. With a fire going and the window seat piled with cushions, the room would be really cozy. The cushions on the window seat would covered with a woven tapestry pattern of flowers and vines in pinks and blues and grays. She could just see it all right now, as if-she sucked in her breath-as if she remembered it from some where.

_The children did their lessons by the window._

Paulette glanced at her curiously but crossed to the door in the wall next the fireplace. She flung open the door. "And here's where we've been living these past eight months since we moved in," she said, gesturing Hermione inside with a flourish. "The study. This room will be off limits to the quests. We're going to keep it as our private living room. What do you think?"  
Hermione bit back a scream.

She backed away, tripping over Paulette, and ran through the library out into the hallway. The staircase loomed above her, and she moaned, turning wildly this way and that, not knowing which way to run. Then she saw the front door and reached for the handle. She flung the door open and ran out into the cool evening air. She sucked great mouthfuls of it into her lungs. Paulette was right behind her, arms outstretched, crying her name.

"Oh, Hermione." She wrapped her arms around Hermione when they reached the van. Hermione didn't have the will to resist. She stood in the circle of Paulette's arms and sobbed.

She found herself crying: "I know that room! I've been there before." She didn't know how it could be so, but she'd seen the same warm red of the oriental carpet, the same polished surface and the big desk before. She knew the gray stone fireplace, knew that same acrid smell of smoke.

She was babbling aloud, almost without knowing it, to Paulette, who stood holding her close. "It's the same room, all the same furniture- everything the same," she kept repeating, as Paulette rubbed her back soothingly.

Finally Hermione pulled away, exhausted and trembling. Paulette kept one hand on Hermione's arm. "Listen," Paulette said. "Come back in with me, Hermione. Come look at that room again. It's nothing like what you've described. There is no desk. There is no fireplace. I wish we had a oriental carpet-but we don't. Come look!"

Hermione hung back. "No, no, I can't go in there."

Paulette opened the van and reached for Hermione's suitcases. "You can just stand in the doorway, okay? Just take one look. It's the only room in the house besides the kitchen and two bedrooms that has any furniture in it at all. But it's not what you say, Hermione." Her voice was breathless and bewildered. "I don't know what you saw, but it wasn't our room."

The dark shapes of trees on the headland offered no sense of sanctuary. Hermione could hear the sound of the ocean hurling itself against the rocks. Where could she go, if not back to the house? She reached for one of the big suitcases, but Paulette shrugged her off and struggled with both of them herself. Hermione followed, holding her backpack in one trembling hand.

Paulette set the suitcases down at the foot of the big staircase. Then she and Hermione walked back into the library and through the room to the door at the back. "Just one peek," urged Paulette. "You'll recognize the furniture all right, but its not anything like what you described. It's the stuff from Johnny's old apartment. Look- on the wall, there's the picture of him that you drew when you were a little girl. He's had it framed. I think it ears stick out a little too much, don't you? But its so cute!"

Hermione forced herself to look around the study. Sure enough, it was just as Paulette aid and just, in fact, as she remembered from her father's living room. The same old plaid couch, covered with green afghan, The sagging green armchairs. The leaning bookshelves crammed to overflowing. A coffee table, cleared and polished in Hermione honor, no doubt, held a single vase with summer wildflowers. The was a television with a VCR in one corner and a shelf above the television holding stacks of videotapes. And there was, as Paulette had said, no fireplace at all.

"You're right," Hermione said, embarrassment flooding her where only minutes before there had been pure terror. "You must think I'm really bizarre. I probably woke up dad, too, when I yelled."

"I doubt it," said Paulette. "Those painkillers are pretty strong." She hesitated, then spoke again, her voice cautious. "Hermione, I don't understand. You seem afraid here. Want to talk about it-Whatever it is?" She regarded Hermione with wide eyes.

"No," Hermione whispered. "I'll be all right."

Paulette nodded. "Well, let's go upstairs now." Hermione followed her out of the study, through the library, and back into the hall. "Can you carry your small bag? I'll take the suitcases."

Hermione slung the carry-on bag over her shoulder and followed Paulette, who struggled under the weight of Hermione's heavy suitcases, up the stairs to the long hallway. She's pregnant, remembered Hermione. I shouldn't let her carry heavy things.

But she felt too weak to help, to speak, to do anything. I'm becoming a zombie, she thought. It sounded pathetic but seemed right on the mark. She kept her eyes down so she wouldn't see the long hall stretching before her.

Paulette open the first door along the hallway and flicked on the light. "Here you go, Hermione. Its pretty small, but this is the only bedroom besides ours that we've fixed up. I hope you like it."

Hermione stumbled in and dropped her carry-on bag on the floor. She saw through bleary eyes that, through not large, the room was high-ceilinged and freshly papered in white sprigs of daisies. The double bed had an ornate brass headboard, which gleamed in the soft over head glow. There was a mahogany dresser with a vase of the same wildflowers Hermione seen down in the study. A small roll top desk stood by the window. The floor was coved by a braided rag rug in many deep colors. "Its great," murmured Hermione. 'Thanks."

"The bathroom is right next door," continued Paulette. "But the shower doesn't work yet, so just use the bath." She hesitated. "Do you need anything else? Are you all right now?"

Hermione sank into the bed. "I'm fine. I'll be fine." She fingered the end of her braid and looked up at Paulette. Something more seemed to need saying. "I'm not always so weird," she offered. "Really."

Paulette smiled unconvincingly. "Well, sleep tight," she said. Then she closed the door. Hermione heard her footsteps darting down the hall to the room she shared with John. Hermione was so tired she couldn't even drag herself to the bathroom. She curled up right on top of the soft bedcover and fell immediately asleep.

Sometime in the middle of the night she awoke with a pressing need and left the room to sue the toilet next door. Groggily she made her way back to her bedroom and climbed into the bed. She pulled the cover over her this time and settled her head on the soft pillows. As she drifted again into sleep, she thought she heard the sound of children's voices somewhere. The singing was soft and distant but all too clear: "Oh my darlin', Oh my darlin', Clementine-

She sat bolt upright in bed, clutching the cover straining to hear. But there was only silence. She waited another few minutes, listening, hardly daring to breath, then at last lay down and pulled the pillow over her head. She must have been dreaming again.

Hermione slept heavily until a hand shook her shoulder. Paulette stood at the side of her bed, wearing an oversized T-shirt with a picture of a panda on it. Her uncombed carrot hair was messy.

"Good morning!" Paulette crossed to the window and pulled back the long curtains. Sunlight flooded the room. "Rise and shine! I'm indulging our favorite invalid with breakfast in bed, and I've set up trays for you and me, too. How do you want your egg?"

Hermione groggily and pushed her hair out of her face. It had fallen out of its braid, Her face was unwashed and her mouth felt fuzzy and horrible.

"Your dad's having a poached egg, but I'm having scrambled."

"I'll have scramble, too." She yawned widely, then tossed back the covers. "Is it all right if I shower first?"

"The showers aren't installed yet, remember? You can havea bath, but it takes a while for the water to warm up, I'm afraid."

Hermione followed Paulette out into the hall. In daylight the hallway seemed less forbidding, then like the one in her dreams. Sunlight from the tall window over the stairs made diamond patterns on the carpet.

In the bathroom Hermione shed her clothes, then started water flowing into the funny tub. The tub stood high on curved irons leg, its porcelain chipped in places, revealing rusted patches. When the water was warm enough, she stepped in gingerly and knelt on the bottom. She left the rubber plug for the drain hanging from its little chain so the water would rush out almost as fast as it poured in.

Leaning forward, she splashed water over herself with cupped hands. She grabbed a washcloth from the pile on the windowsill and washed her face. She ducked her head under the flow from the faucet and shampooed quickly, then turned off the water, expelling her pent up breath in a gasp of relief. In less then five minutes she was out of the tub, toweled dry, and dressed in jeans and a red tang top. She'd managed it-almost a bath. But she eyed the tub warily and wondered whether they sold shower attachments for the faucet in such a little town.

She toweled her wet hair, bending from the waist to shake out the tangles. Then she braided her hair into her customary long tail and walked barefoot down the hall to the master bedroom. The door was open. Hermione gave her father a hug. "How's your ankle?"

He was sitting up against several pillows, his brown hair tousled, blond stubble of a beard scratching her face when he squeezed back. "Oh, its there, I didn't sleep very well." He patted the bed and he sat on the edge.

"I didn't either, with this great lummox flailing around next to me, " said Paulette, reaching over to ruffle Johnny's thinning her. He grabbed her fingers and kissed them.

Paulette set their breakfast on tray tables near the bed. There was a stack of toast, little jars of jam, and an egg for each, orange juice, and three small bowls of blueberries. "The blueberries grow right here on the headland." she told Hermione. "I picked these this morning. They're great with milk and a little sugar."

"Thanks." Hermione drank her juice. Paulette poured them each a cup of mint tea. John stretched, shifting his ankle with a groan, then settled back on his pillows.

"So, Hermione, how did you sleep?" He asked. From the significant look he exchanged with Paulette, Hermione knew her stepmother told him all about Hermione's unusual reaction to the house the night before.


	11. Cotton Line and Clemetine Horn

Hermione Pleated the bedspread between her fingers. "I just don't know what's going on with me, Dad. But it's not only here. Things were weird at home, but I thought coming here would help. Looks like it hasn't. "

"Since when have things…been weird at home, honey?" Asked her father. "Since your accident?"

"I'm not so sure it was an accident," she muttered.

"But what kind of weird?"

"Well, you know the bad dream I've always had? It used to come just once in a while, but not anymore. Now I'm having bad dreams all the time. They're making me crazy."

John Granger looked concerned. "What brings on the dreams, Hermione? I know Jenny keeps your nose to the grindstone-"

"No, it isn't really anything to do with Mom." Hermione hated it when her parents criticized each other. "Things started getting worse a few weeks ago, you know- when I got caught laying about passing the swim test, I think." The humiliation still felt fresh. "That night I had the dream again. First time in a long time. And then every night. It was hellish, dad. Swim lessons by day, nightmares by night." She forked up some egg. "Look, lets not talk about it. I'm trying to forget."

Paulette had been sitting quietly, sipping her tea. Now she spoke up. "Recurring dreams come to us for a reason, you know. And I bet there's some connection between the swimming lessons and the dreams. If we were in San Francisco, I could take you to this great therapist who dose dreamwork, Hermione. I don't know about Maine-they might not have that sort of thing here."

Hermione buttered a piece of toast. _Dreamwork! _Jenny would get a kick out of the word. It was so very Californian.

John saw her expression and put his hand on hers. "Let's drop it." he said. "You're here now and under no stress at all." He tried for a joke. "You just relax and strip wallpaper. What could make for a better summer?" Then he look serious. "You should explore the village. Maybe you'll make some new friends."

"Oh!" Exclaimed Paulette. "Johnny, that reminds me- the phone call!" She turned to Hermione. "I forgot to tell you last night that your friend called."

"My friend? What friend?" _Amanda sure didn't give up easily._

"It was a boy. Nice, deep voice. Dean or Duke, or something." Paulette giggled nervously at Hermione's anxious face. "He sounded very nice. Said he was a friend of yours and planned to do some traveling up here this summer. He was hoping we needed somebody to work on the house."

"Oh, my God, was it Draco? Was his name Draco Malfoy?"

"That boy!" exclaimed John.

Paulette hesitated. "I think that was the name…"

"When did he call?" Hermione wailed. "How could he have known I was here?"

Paulette sank into a green armchair, looking drained, as if having Hermione as a guest was proving to more exhausting then she'd anticipated. "Well, lets see." She began, running her hands through her hair. "We were papering the dinning room and the phone rang in the study. I went in to answer, and it was this boy. He sounded…well, nice. He said to say hello to you when you got in."

"You didn't hire him." Said Hermione, fearing the worst.

"Well, no." Paulette assured her. "I said we couldn't afford to hire anyone, and we were doing fine ourselves. And then just as we were hanging up, I heard this awful crash. I ran back to find Johnny had fallen off the ladder-my poor lamb! Then we had to rush to the hospital, and everything else has been happening since." She looked at Hermione anxiously over the rim of her teacup. "I would have told you about your friend's call sooner, but it completely slipped my mind."

"Don't call him my friend, whatever you do," said Hermione. "I came here to get away from him." She closed her eyes, then added in a softer voice. "And to see you Dad, of course." She didn't wan to offend Paulette on top of everything else. _But, My God! My life is becoming something right out of the twilight zone._

She fought for calm, invoked her mother's reasonable nature, and opened her eyes. "Draco is the boy who threw me into the pool."

"I didn't know that, Hermione." Paulette set her cup down on the try with a clatter. "Johnny, why didn't you tell me?"

"I thought I had." Answered John. He put his hand on Hermione's arm. "Look, honey, don't worry about it. There's no way I'd let that guy near the place now, knowing how he upsets you." His voice was reassuring. "I don't doubt he's sorry about what happened, but the way to atone is to leave you in pace, not ot pester you."

"Thinking about him makes me feel sick." She drained her juice and set the glass on her tray table.

John shifted his ankle and grimaced. "Well, then, lets move on to a happier subject. Paulette tells me she has already spilled the beans about our big news."

Hermione mustered a grin. "I think its great about the baby, Dad."

Paulette snuggled up next to John and rested her head on his shoulder. John reached up one hand and stroked her face. "I always wanted lots of kids," John beamed. "But your mom didn't think it was practical to have more then one. Just think-now you'll be a big sister. Wont you love helping to take care of a new little Granger?"

"I can't wait!"

Paulette nuzzled John's neck. "You sure made a beautiful baby the first time, Johnny boy. Do you think our little Christmas angel will look like Hermione?"

"I hope so," said John, smiling at both of them. "What's on the agenda today? I'd intended to show you around Hibben, Hermione, but looks like I'm stuck for a while."

"Don't worry, I'll do the honors." said Paulette. "We'll go this morning.

After washing up the breakfast dishes, Hermione and Paulette left the house for the breezy headland. Hermione went straight over to the van, but Paulette shook her head. "We can walk," she said. "It isn't far. Just back down the drive and turn left. Maybe a mile."

They walked side by side, through Paulette had to skip occasionally to keep up with Hermione long stride. Hermione tried politely to adjust to her stepmother's speed but inadvertently took the lead again as the road dipped downhill, and Paulette had to scurry to catch up.

She caught Hermione's hand and swung it. "Isn't it a gorgeous day?" She cried, then sang it to the tune of "twinkle, twinkle, little star."

"Isn't it a gorgeous day, Isn't it a gorgeous day? Now that Hermione's here to stay. And we walking on our way- Isn't it a gorgeous day, now that Hermione's come to play!"

Hermione laughed. Paulette was acting like a little kid. Hermione could imagine Jenny's smirk if she could see John's pregnant wife singing and dancing along the road. Hermione was glad Jenny wasn't there to see. She liked Paulette and knew she wouldn't be making fun of her with Jenny anymore.

The road from the headland wound though the trees and ended at a narrow, paved road. Paulette led them to the left, down a hill to the town. Paulette broke off her song to point to the sign that right: Hibben, Maine, pop.812. "Soon to be 813," Paulette giggled, patting her belly.

Massive chunks of gray granite lined the road on one side. The first building they came to was a picturesque white clapboard church with a graceful steeple. It was surrounded by a low wall built of the gray stone. Behind the church was a cemetery, the old headstones dotting the grass.

"A lot of houses in the town are built of this rock." said Paulette. "See there? Unusual along the coast, where most houses are made of wood. That's the old school house- it's a antique shop now. We'll have a look around on our way home. And that's the post office-it used to be the general store. Isn't it quaint?"

Hermione stood on the narrow sidewalk and looked down the street. A street sign informed her this was Main Street. It led down a hill lined with buildings of gray stone and white clapboard and ended, it seemed, right in the sea. Hermione could just make out the mast of dozens of small fishing vessels and pleasure boats were the street stopped and the water began. That must be the wharf.

There were only a few streets leading off Main Street. Hermione paused at the bottom of one marked Cotton Lane. It led up the cliff sharply to the right and was unpaved. Dust blew across the rutted dirt lane. She blinked the dust out of her eyes- and saw she been mistaken. Cotton Lane _was_ paved, after all.

Then she felt it-the curious sense of recognition. She stood for a long moment, wrapped in thought, trying to remember. _Where have I seen this before?_

"Look there," Paulette was saying. She pointed to a group of camera-laden men and women carrying shopping bags, who trudged past them up the hill. "Hibben is changing from a little old fishing village, and there's nothing the old-timers can do about it. But that's good news for us. Tourists need a place to say, and what better place then a romantic old Victorian on a cliff? I bet they'll just flock to us once it is open. Hibben's history is full of the stuff tourists love to hear about: ships wrecked in the cove in the fog, huge storms the villagers call 'northeasters' whipping in from the ocean in winter, ancient Indian sacred grounds just over the hills…" Then she paused. "Hermione? What's wrong?"

"This little street," began Hermione. "Where does it go?"

"Cotton Lane? It just goes up the hill. Ends at the cliff. There are a few old cottages left, and some new condos. And the public library, such as it is."

Hermione started up the steep lane without a word.

"Hey, wait up!" cried Paulette. Scrambling alone behind.

As Hermione climbed on, she clenched her fingers into fists. She climbed steadily, all the way to the end of the row of whitewashed cottages, and stopped abruptly at the last cottage. It, unlike the others, was of gray stone, and it had a bright blue gate set into the fence in front of it and a painted blue door to match the wooden addition built onto the side of the house. The sign on the gat announced: Hibben Free Library, est. 1941.

She put her hand on the gate and flung it open, then hurried along the path up to the blue door. The humming began in her head, insistent.

She gripped her hatbox and basket tightly.

_Box? Basket? What's going on?_

She approached the plump, fair-haired woman sweeping the stoop. "Mrs. Wilkins?" She asked, untying her shawl (_Shawl?)_ and settling it loosely over her shoulders. She put up a hand to check that her braids were still neatly pinned across her head.

"Yes, Dear?" The woman stopped sweeping and leaned on her broom. "Oh, you're one of the Holloway girls! How are you this morning?"

"Clementine Horn," she corrected. "And I'm fine, thank you."

"Hermione! Hermione!" Paulette cried, her small hand gripping Hermione's arm like pincers. "What are you doing? The Library's closed. Nobody's here at all."

Hermione collapsed on the stone step of the house and stared up at Paulette, dazed. Then she glanced down at herself-she wasn't wearing a shawl, wasn't crarrying a wicker basket or a round hatbox. _But she had been._ She put her hands to her head. Her hair was in a single braid hanging over her shoulder-not in tow braids wrapped around her head like a coronet._ But it had been._

"Oh, Paulette," She whispered. Tears welled in her eyes. "What in the world is happening to me?"

A/N: thanks for the reviews for the last chapter and I hope you like this one…Oh the next chapter is going to be interesting. Please review thanks.


	12. the fireplace

Without a word, Paulette pulled her to her feet and back along the path, away from the library and down Cotton Lane. She glanced left and right as Hermione stumbled along beside her, and no longer looked like a schoolgirl at play. Her eyes were serious and her mouth was set in a firm line. She hurried Hermione back into Main street and down the hill to the pier, not meeting the curious eyes of the tourists and townspeople who watched their progress. She stopped at last in front of a small café by the wharf. Vendors near the ferry dock sold hot dogs and soft drinks and little whittled sailing ships. The smell of fish was everywhere.

They went inside and Paulette asked for a table in the far corner. She pushed Hermione gently into a chair. "Get something to drink. How about some juice?"

_How about a shot of vodka? That might bring me to my senses._

"A Coke." she mumbled.

"A Coke," Paulette told the waiter, her voice firm. "And some orange juice, please." When the waiter left, she leaned across the table. "All right." she said. "Will you please tell me what that was all about?"

Hermione stared at the tabletop and twisted a paper napkin between her fingers. "I thought I saw a woman in front of that cottage-the library, I mean. I knew her. I had come because…" She hesitated, trying to recall just how she'd felt on Cotton Lane. There were strands of memory, but nothing she could weave into anything meaningful. 'I had a plan, I think. I wanted to talk to somebody inside that house." She shook her head. "Nothing is making any sense/"

Paulette gestured at the restaurant around them. " Have you ever heard of déjà vu? It's French for 'already seen' It's the feeling when you think you've seen something already."

"I know what it means." Said Hermione.

The waiter brought the drinks, and Hermione seized her Coke gratefully. When he moved away, Paulette leaned forward. "I heard you say a name. Clementine Horn. Who is that?"

"I don't know. I never heard that name before in my life." She hesitated. "Only-here's something else weird, Paulette-that Clementine song has been in my head for weeks now. I hear it in my dreams, too/"

The Clementine song?" asked Paulette, puzzled. "Oh, you mean the one about the miner?" and then as uninhibited as she'd been walking down the road, Paulette burst into song right there in the café. "Oh my darlin', Oh my darlin'-"

Hermione froze. "Stop it!" She cried. "It's horrible."

Paulette broke off, aghast. They sat in silence a long, tense moment. Paulette's next question seemed to come out of the blue. "Have you read Shakespeare Hermione? Do you know Hamlet?"

Hermione blinked. "I took an honors course in Shakespeare. We read everything."

"Well then you certainly must know the part when Hamlet says to Horatio: 'There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, Then are dreamt of in your philosophy."

Hermione shrugged. "yeah."

"And do you agree, Hermione? Do you believe that Hamlet was right, that our philosophies are limited? That people don't really understand all there is to understand in the world?"

"Of course." Hermione wanted to go back to the house and fall asleep. She stood up. "lets go home, Paulette."

Paulette stood as well, picking up the bill the waiter had left on the edge of their table. "It's not irrelevant you know," she said. "The weird things that are happening to you have to be on of two things, don't you see? Either it's just as bad as you think, and you are having some sort of breakdown…Or else it's something else, something we can barely conceive of, something that might even make a sort of sense, if we only had the right philosophy. Get it?" She paid the bill, and they walked outside onto Main street.

Hibben was sleepy in the warm sunshine. A few tourists were on the pier snapping the colorful fishing boats out in the cove with their zoom lenses, but otherwise the streets were all but empty. Hermione's head was aching fiercely now. She trailed behind Paulette up the hill to the house.

After launch Hermione threw herself into stripping wallpaper in the dinning room. The work was tiring her out, but it was good. If she were tired enough, she would be able to forget. The thought of what had happened that morning in town made her break out in a sweat of panic. Better not think. Work and sleep, that was the way to handle things.

They ate dinner together in the master bedroom upstairs. Paulette lentil soup and homemade croutons and a salad. When they finished, Johnny and Paulette exchanged a look. Hermione braced herself.

John wasted no time getting to the point. "Hermione, honey, Paulette told me about what happened this morning in town. I admit I'm worried."

"Maybe a doctor. Or a psychologist could help." Suggested Paulette. "After all, your unconscious maybe trying to tell you something though all these dreams and now these…well, visions in town."

"I don't need a shrink." said Hermione. "I'm just tired. What I need is sleep, that's all." She left them looking after her as she hurried down the hall to her bedroom and shut the door.

The next morning she and Paulette helped John hobble down the back stairs to the kitchen. At breakfast John and Paulette were careful not to mention anything out of the ordinary, and Hermione was grateful. After breakfast two carpenters and a plumber arrived on the headland to consult with john and Paulette about renovating the existing bathroom and adding several more for the guest rooms. She found peaceful there, standing on the stepladder pulling strips of faded, flowered paper off the wall. The old glue was yellow and brittle. It tore away easily, sending a fine dust into the scuffed wooden floor.

By noon the workmen had gone. Paulette served lunch in the study, and while they ate, Hermione quizzed Paulette and her father on names for the new baby. "It'll be born near Christmas, right?" she asked. "How about something festive? Noelle? Or Carol?"

"What about Star?" suggested Paulette.

"Too new aged." objected Hermione.

"Well, how about Wreath?" asked John. He grinned at them. "What makes you so sure the baby will be a girl, anyway?"

"Okay, then, what about Rudolf? Or Santa?" Teased Hermione. "Saint Nick?"

"That's not bad, actually," said john. "Nicholas Granger. It has a nice ring to it."

When the finished their sandwiches, John and Paulette started looking at paint samples for the guest bedrooms. Hermione moved to the couch and turned on the television. The sop opera actors were sobbing about someone's nervous break down. Hermione watched with interest. Was this how people react when she was carted off?

A crash from the other side of the room made her look up, and she saw that the big book of paint samples had fallen off the table as Paulette leaned across to kiss John on the tip of his nose. Hermione smiled indulgently. They were like a pair of little kids. Then she looked beyond them to the wall. Something made her smile stiffen. That was the wall here she had imagined a fireplace the first night she arrived. Was it Hermione imagination, or was the old floral wallpaper buckling the all met the ceiling? She felt compelled to get up and check.

"Hey, what are you doing?" John asked in surprise as she dragged the ottoman over to the wall and climbed on it, stretching to reach the edge of the strip that was loose.

"Hey, Hermione! We'd decided to leave this paper along." protest Paulette. 'Don't rip it."

But Hermione tugged harder and the old paper ripped away from the wall, revealing brick. She pulled more off, lower down, shouldering aside the small bookcase. Next to the brick, a section of plywood came into view . She stopped. Unaccountably, she was shaking.

Paulette jumped off the couch and rushed over. "Now, who would put wallpaper over brick? Look at this John…Oh! It's a fireplace, I think. Boarded over." She stared at Hermione with wide eyes.

John hobbled over to inspect the broad. "Well, well! This is great. Maybe the last owners didn't use the room much or didn't want drafts. But I'll get somebody to come out to inspect it. We'll enjoy toasting out toes in here by the fire come winter." Then he looked a Hermione. "How in the world did you know this would be here?"

She hugged herself , shivering. "I don't know," She tried to press the patterned paper back into place. Softly, very softly, the humming was starting in her head again. I've got to get out of here, she thought desperately. I have to get away.

"I'm going out for a walk," She said hoarsely. A walk on the headland might make her feel better. Fresh air.

"Good idea," said John. Looking at her oddly.

Hermione crossed the yard surrounding the house and moved through the trees along a path leading toward the cliff. Tall strong grasses waved gracefully in the breeze, beckoning her. When she turned and look back at the house, the many windows winked at her like eyes.

Ahead of her the cliff jutted out over the cove. Hermione stopped and listened to the surge of waves crashing against the rock. She kept carefully way from the cliff edge, not wanting to see the water. The sun beat warmly on her head, and the sea breeze stirred her braid. Overhead gulls wheeled in the sky, and plunged out of sight over the edge of the cliff. When she was in sight of the house again, Hermione sank down in a soft clearing at the edge of the trees.

She lay back and crossed her arms under her head, staring up at the sky. As she watched, the gray clouds blew across and blotted out the sun. Should she see a psychologist, as Paulette suggested? Jenny would never approve. And Hermione didn't feel Crazy…But on the other hand, maybe part of being crazy was not knowing you were. _Use your famous brain_, she ordered herself. _Why is this happening to_ _you?_ She closed here eyes to think.

She must have been dozing, one arm flung up over her eyes, when she heard a rustling in the tall grass and knew she was not alone. She heard whispers of children. She held her breath. The rustling and whispers stopped. A cool, dump wind began to blow. It smelled like rain.

She then open her eyes and saw Draco Malfoy standing over her. "You!"

_Now I know I'm Dreaming._

He stepped across the grass to stand next to her, but she backed away. "Hermione, Please!" He said and his voice sounded real enough. "I've came all this way."

He was standing there in dark green shorts and a white T-shirt. His light hair looked freshly trimmed.

"Are you kidding? How dare you track me all the way to Maine!"

"I didn't exactly track you," he said slowly. He didn't move any closer sensing she would run back to the house if he did. He sat down in the grass, instead, and looked at her. "Come on. Sit down and I'll tell you all about it."

She remained standing, hands on her hips. 'How the Hell did you get here?" He was real. He was as real as she was.


	13. you have five minutes

"I flew, the same as you. Then took the bus from Bangor. It's a hellish trip on that coast road, let me tell you. Stopping at every little Podunk town along the way. I thought I'd never get here."

"What I want to know is how you knew where to find me in the first place?"

"I just asked your mom where you were. That's all."

"And my mom told you?"

"Sure. Obviously." He held out one hand toward her. "Oh, Hermione-I've been going absolutely crazy, and it's your fault because you won't talk to me. I called here the other day to see if your dad would hire me since they're doing a lot of work on their house, but-"

"My mom told you that, too?"

"Yeah. But the woman who answered said they didn't need anyone, and then the connection broke. When I called back later to talk to you, no one was home. So I told my aunt and uncle I had to make a little trip to visit a friend, and I booked my flight, and here I am. I got here this afternoon, and I'm staying until you'll talk to me."

She couldn't believe any of this. What was she supposed to say to this person who had nearly killed her and now felt drawn to seek her out, wherever she might travel? It occurred to her that he might be crazy. Like one of those weirdos who stalk their favorite movie stars, always phoning and harassing them. You had to be careful with people like that. You couldn't trust them at all.

She glanced around, hoping to see her father or Paulette coming toward them, but they were alone. She frowned. "Where are you staying?"

"There's a campground about two miles around the cove-toward the next little town." He patted the ground in front of him. "Come on. Please. Sit down. Just for a few minutes. If you'll just answer a few questions, I promise I won't bother you again."

She sat down in the grass and wrapped her arms around her knees. The wind picked up and sea gulls screamed, circling over head. A sprinkle of raindrops scattered down, then stopped. "All right, you got five minutes. Then I'm going in, and I wont see you again."

Draco rubbed his hands through his blonde hair. "Fair enough, okay." He studied her face for a long moment, silent.

When he did not begin, she looked pointedly at her watch. "four minutes-and the clocks ticking."

Then came a rush of words. His voice grew choked. "I don't know what it is, Hermione, but it's something to do with you. And it started at the party. We danced-and it was like I'd held you before. And then we were at the pool and you wouldn't get in-well, something just happened. It was like something snapped in me." He held up his hand to stop her from saying anything. "Look, I told you already. I don't know why I did it. It was scary. I knew it was wrong, and did it anyway. I sort of had to."

_Had to? _Hermione edged further away from him.

"I'm really sorry, Hermione, but - about the things I saw under water? That's what we have to talk about. There was a round box. And there was seaweed-and I saw blood in the water. I know, I know-it had to be a hallucination. But right after I started having dreams. Bad ones. I had the first one that very night, after we revived you and taken you to the hospital. It was about you, I know it was-but the girl didn't look like you. She looked like some old-fashioned girl, wearing a long skirt, with her hair pinned up. You know, how they wore it, like, a hundred years ago?" Draco's eyes burned into hers. She could not look away, through the panic was welling inside her. "She was you, somehow, Hermione, in my dream. And I was singing that song to her, you know the one-" And he began to sing in a husky voice:

"Oh my darlin', oh my darlin', Oh my darlin', Clementine. You are lost and gone forever-"

Hermione jumped up. This was beyond crazy. She began running for a house.

"Hermione! Hermione, wait!" He rushed behind, heedless of the raindrops that now spattered down from the gray sky.

She reached the back door, but it was locked. She hammered on it with her fist, blind panic overtaking her now. "Get away from me! She howled as the door opened and she tumbled into the kitchen.

Paulette stood there, astonished. 'What in the world is going on?" she cried.

"Close the door! I don't want to talk to him!" Hermione tried to push it shut, but Draco was there, frantic that she shouldn't get away from him again.

"Please, Hermione-"

"Five minutes are up!" She yelled.

"But I haven't finished!"

"You have for now, I think." Said Paulette, pushing Hermione aside and standing in front of Draco. "She said she doesn't want to talk to you. Whoever you are."

"But-I need to see her!" Draco was much taller then Paulette and looked over her head to where Hermione stood near the kitchen table. "Hermione, come on. We have to talk about what these vision mean. Why do you run away when I sing 'Clementine' to you?"

Paulette's eyes widened. She glanced over her shoulder at Hermione, who was edging toward the pantry. Then she frowned at Draco. "Listen, maybe we'd better talk about this."

"I'm trying to, can't you tell?"

On the counter in the pantry was a basket of red tomatoes. Hermione reached for one. Her arm ached with wanting to lob it across the kitchen to splatter smack in the middle of Draco Malfoy's forehead. The force of wanting this made her clench her hand, and the tomato split. Juice ran down her fingers.

_Blood on her hands?_ She stared down at them, her head pounding.

"Are you the boy who called about a job here?" asked Paulette. She studied him with her green eyes.

When he nodded, she shook her head. "Well, who can blame Hermione for not wanting to see you? But you know our phone number. Maybe you can discuss this better over the phone.:

Draco's shoulders sagged. "Believe me, I've tried." The rain dripped off his hair and ran into his eyes. He wiped his face as he turned away from the door. Then he looked back once and shouted: "I'm calling tomorrow, Hermione. And you better answer me!"

"Oh yeah?" she called from the safety of the pantry, wiping her hands on her shorts. "Or else what, Draco Malfoy?"

Their eyes caught and held across the room. The look was angry, challenging- but full of something else, too. The silence stretched out between them, electric. Hermione couldn't look away.

"Or else…or else I'll call again, I guess," Draco finally said, simply. "And again."

Then he walked away in the rain, and Paulette closed the door. She turned to Hermione, "We need to get to the bottom of this," she said.

Hermione bowed her head. She could hear Draco's husky voice singing to her. "_you are lost and gone forever-_" She could hear the soft laughter of children echoing through the house. Her head was aching fiercely.

"I need aspirin," she gulped.

Paulette walked over and placed a small, cool hand on the back of Hermione neck. "Com on upstairs," she said, "and I'll give you a head rub. A good massage will help you more then aspirin. And I want to try a meditation technique I know."

"Sounds very new aged, very California," said Hermione, but she was too upset to argue. They went upstairs. Hermione lay on her bed, her head cradled by a pillow. She closed her eyes.

She felt Paulette tug the elastic off the end of her braid and unravel the long strands. Then she felt Paulette's hands on the top of her head. At first she tensed, uncomfortable. But then, despite herself, she yielded to the touch of her stepmother's fingers against her scalp. For such small hands, Paulette were surprisingly strong. The softness of the pillow under her neck and Paulette's firm pressure on her head made her relax. And Paulette smiled at her reassuringly. Hermione closed her eyes again, embarrassed to be this close to her stepmother, touching like this. Jenny gave her a hug now and then, but they didn't really touch very often. Not for very long.

After a few moments of silent massage, Paulette's voice came softly. "are you relaxed?"

"Yes," Hermione's voice was a sigh.

"Good. Now, do this for me. Imagine you can see a candle. Picture the flame. Can you see it?"

Hermione had no will to resist. She gave in to the hands rubbing her scalp and face. Behind her closed eyes a flame leapt high. "Yes."

"Watch the flame. Concentrate on the flame." Paulette's voice was soft. And after a long pause, she continued. "Now in that flame you can see a long tunnel. It's a tunnel you can walk down, a long, long tunnel. Imagine yourself walking down that tunnel." Paulette paused again. 'Do you see it? Are you walking down the tunnel?"

"Yes."

She smoothed Hermione's temples. "And along the sides of the tunnel are doors. Hermione. Behind these doors are memories of all the things you have experienced in your long, long life. In your many lives. I want you to go to the door that has the girl in your dream behind it. The girl with the name you heard people call you. Clementine Horn. You will open the door and see Clementine Horn, whoever Clementine is. When you open the door, you will know her story, and you will be able to tell it. You will not be frightened, Hermione. You will see scenes almost as if they were a film." Paulette paused again, but her hands kept rubbing Hermione's head. "You will not be frightened," she repeated.

Now Hermione could see the tunnel in the candle flame behind her closed eyes. But when she tried to visualize the doors, she saw instead a large round box, with her hand holding down the pulsing lid. She knew this box. When she heard Paulette's voice telling her to open the door, Hermione imagined herself lifting the lid off this box. Was it the hatbox? Was it Pandora's box, from which all the evils in the world would excape? She listened to Paulette's reassurances. "You will not be frightened." Then softly, slowly as if only background music, the humming began. It merged with Paulette's voice and expanded in Hermione's mind until her head pulsed relentlessly with the time.

And Hermione knew suddenly that, frightened or not, what she had to do now was open that box. It seemed she had been waiting her life to release its contents. And so she did.


	14. Clementine past

After her chores were done Clementine left the big house by the kitchen door and hurried across the headland towards the sea. She tried to keep well hidden by the double line of washing flapping in the brisk wind, holding up her long skirts and running between the twin walls of sheets, then walking swiftly through the scrub in tall reed grass toward the cliff.

She had cut the children's lessons short and taken them down to the kitchen, where Janie would give them a snack. They'd be eating it now, giving her perhaps a half hour privacy. Nonetheless, she glanced back over her shoulder to make sure Abner, the one who clung to her like a barnacle, was not following. She saw the many windows of the house winking in the sunlight. They watched her, she felt, like the watchful eyes of her uncle and aunt.

She hurried through the thick screen of reed grass to her favorite spot right at the edge of the cliff. From there she liked to watch the water roll into the cove. The semicircle formed by the walls of the cliff made the cove into a churning caldron. Sometimes seals sunned themselves atop the rocks, and she never stopped marveling that they could swim in water that always looked at the boil.

When she was younger and had first came to her uncle and aunt's house, Clementine used to take her doll out to the cliff and pretend she was a giant, cooking soup for supper. She pull up fists full of pebbles and fling them down into the pot, then twist off stalks of the reed grass and hurl them down, too. "Now just a little pinch of salt," she'd bellow in a giant's huge voice, and kick dirt over the cliff wall into the boiling broth. "Time to eat, dear Hermione." she would shout, staring down into the froth of foam against the rocks.

At the cliff's edge she would set up a rock table for her doll called Hermione. The doll could drink her soup from a curved leaf. But Clementine could just lean forward and suck her soup right out of the cove. Giants were powerful. They didn't need to bother with table manners. They didn't even need a table.

Once Clementine had careless knocked Hermione over the cliff. She had feared there would be no chance of recovering her beloved doll, one of the few links left to her home and parents. She had lain on her stomach to peer over the edge down into the spray. And luck was with her. There was Hermione, resting only six or seven feet down the side of the cliff on a wide shelf rock.

Clementine had taken off her shinny button shoes and black woolen stockings. Then, scooting backward over the edge, grasping great handfuls of the tufted grass that grew from the cracks between the rocks, she eased herself safely into the rock shelf. She grabbed up the little doll and hugged her. She then saw to her surprise that the shelf she stood on was actually a little natural front porch to a cave house. She crept inside and found herself in a low-ceilinged room just big enough for one or two children to sit in. She sat down, holding Hermione in her lap.

What a perfect hiding place. Her aunt and uncle would never find her here. She could have all the privacy she needed. If only climbing back up were as easy as climbing down had been, she could come as often as she liked, and no one would ever be the wiser.

She stuffed the little doll down the front of her dress. Feeling for footholds and reaching up to grab the cliff plants, she then shimmied back up the rock face. She reached the top, exhilarated. The deadly drop into the cove should her feet slip didn't worry her at all. Her need for a place where the children couldn't find her made her brave.

But games of giants and secret caves belonged to childhood. Now when Clementine came into the cliff's edge, she came alone, and not to play. There were no hiding places anymore. Even the little cave offered no sanctuary ever sanctuary ever since little Abner trailed her to the cliff a few months back and hid in the grass. He had watched her lower herself down the ledge, then peered over the edge and called to her, exultant that he'd found her, demanding she let him come down to see. He scurried over the cliff's edge so fast she had to reach up and catch him. Then there was nothing she could do but show him the safe handholds of tufted grass, the best footholds in the rock. She made him promise it would be their secret, but since then the cave had no magic for her.

Still, she came out to the cliff whenever she could escape from the many children who where her responsibility every afternoon. Soon-if Aunt Ethel and Uncle Wallace had their way-the children would be her responsibility every morning as well. Morning, afternoon, and evening, Clementine was to be in charge of all her cousins. She had her seventeenth birthday a month ago, in May, and the very day after, Uncle Wallace gave notice to the children's governess. When the school term finished, he said, they would no longer need her because Clementine would be stepping into her place. Now Miss Finch was upstairs packing her trunks, readying herself to move out in a few day's time.

A terrible anger had came over Clementine the day after her seventeenth birthday and settled in her boons like a sickness. She hated to be leaving the little school in the village. She wasn't ready! She was thirsty fro more knowledge and longed to go on to college. More and more girls were continuing their education these days. Clementine was sure her own mother and father would have encouraged her to learn as much as she could. But Aunt Ethel and Uncle Wallace were adamant: her place was home with the family.

Clementine stared rebelliously down at the water in the cove, her resentment surging with the waves. Into the cove, then out again, then in again to be dashed against the rocks. There was no escape for the water. Its function was to fill the cove and slap the cliff walls, then recede in a froth of white then rush back again. But for her?

She must get away from here! There were several colleges and ladies seminaries of higher learning, down east. Whey shouldn't she be allowed to go? She had tired again the other day to make her Uncle Wallace see reason, but he had just laughed.

Clementine hurled a rock over the side of the cliff and watched it disappear into the water, as completely and quietly as she herself would disappear. She had come up with a strategy. A plan. She would run away after school was out for the summer. She had no money and wasn't sure yet where she would go, but those were mere details. They would be worked out. College would cost a lot, she knew, and her uncle wouldn't be giving her a penny of his considerable wealth if she ran away. But she could work, certainly she could-and hard, too. If she could be an unpaid governess for the many young cousins, surely she could be a governess for someone else's children for a tidy salary. Not in Hibben, of course, but somewhere where her uncle wouldn't be able to find her. And if she saved her money, why shouldn't that cover the cost of her tuition at an academy of higher learning? She would talk to Miss Kent at school tomorrow and ask her advice about which school to apply to, and where she might advertise her services as a governess.

School had always been a source of joy and a place of refuge for Clementine. When she'd first come to live with her aunt and uncle, a tragic little ten-year-old still numb with grief over the loss of her parents, the school had comforted her where her uncle's family could not. Her uncle's children took their lessons in the nursery school room with Miss Finch until they were ten years old. Then they went off to boarding school in Bangor or Boston. But Uncle Wallace and Aunt Ethel had felt that boarding school wasn't necessary for Clementine. The village school would be good enough for her.

Aunt Ethel and Uncle Wallace were very proud of their station in life. They lived in the biggest house in Hibben, built high on the headland above the village a generation earlier by Uncle Wallace's father. The Holloway family owned the fishing fleet that sailed out everyday, manned by village fisherman. They kept themselves separate from the villagers. It wouldn't do for their children to mix with the village children, but Clementine, after all, wasn't really their own. She wasn't a Holloway but a Horn. She settled in at the village school, mixing easily enough with the rough fishermen's children. Blood will tell, thought Uncle Wallace.

Clementine had become a model student at the village school, outshining the older pupils with her accomplishments. Her favorite subject was geography, and she took pride in knowing the names and locations of all the states and territories. She had enjoyed the daily walk down into the town, right along Main Street to the stone schoolhouse next to whitewashed wooden church. She loved the smell of powdery chalk, the smooth black surface of the slates, the crisp pages of book, the pads of lined writing paper, the ink pots, and the sharp pens. She loved catching whiffs of Miss Kent fain perfume whenever the teaching walked by her desk. The head exhilaration of coming in first in the math contest, of being the top student in geography, of writing the best essay or performing flawlessly in recitation-all these triumphs made life without her parents bearable.

Clementine had a mind trap. It captured and retained all information that came her way. She was much smarter then her cousins, she knew, but when she had asked Uncle Wallace to pleas let her join the older girls at the boarding school was out of the question for Clementine. They needed her home to help with all the babies.

There had been two children away at boarding school when Clementine first came to live with them, and three younger ones at home. Now there were three away at boarding school or college- Arnold, Avery, and Alex. Anastasia had married last year and lived in Boston. There were seven still at home- Anne, Andrew, Amity, Aaron, Abner, Alice, and Augustus. They slept two to a room, with Clementine sharing the nursery with baby Augustus so that she might answer his cries in the night. She had assisted at most of their births and help her aunt through labor and delivery more then once when the doctor didn't arrive in time. And Clementine was very good with the children-"a natural," Miss Finch said approvingly. She had the knack.

But having a knack, Clementine often fumed, was not the same as having a calling. And now there was only one week of school left, and six seniors students would be leaving forever.

Clementine stared down over the cliff now, booding. The only other senior girl, Jilly Peters, was eager for babies. She and Richard Wallings planned to marry at Christmastime, and Jillly wanted a baby by the end of summer. Richard had left the school a year earlier and was working on his fathers fishing schooner. That was what most of the boys n the village did when they finished school- many left school at sixteen to get a head start working on the vessels that would provide their livelihood. Three of the four boys in the senior class- Hob Wilkins, Sam Sawyer, and Gilbert Hanks- all planned to work with their fathers on the boats. The fourth boy, Earl Wallings, Richards younger brother, had decided he would go south to work in a papermaking factory in Lewiston. The end of school was a dream come true for the other seniors. Only for Clementine was it a nightmare. For it meant she would become fulltime nursemaid to all her young cousins. Her spirit rebelled against a life taken over by babies with sticky fingers, games of hide and seek, and rhymes from mother goose.


End file.
